Chuck Knox has passed away

Former Rams coach Chuck Knox has a loving advocate for his legacy in granddaughter Lee Ann Norman

http://www.latimes.com/sports/nfl/la-sp-chuck-knox-plaschke-20160716-snap-story.html

They are a different kind of team, in a different kind of battle, one that even the toughest days of the Rams’ impending training camp can’t match.
In a retirement home in Anaheim, the greatest Rams coach fights to find his memory.

In an apartment in downtown Seattle, his granddaughter fights to make sure the football world doesn’t forget him.
Chuck Knox, 84, suffering from dementia, spends his days in a pleasant cottage with wife Shirley, his striking blue eyes bright, his warm smile strong, but his mind faded, such that he recognizes few visitors and has little contact with old football friends.
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Lee Ann Norman, 27, a former medical student who was mentored by her grandfather, spends her days figuring out ways to keep his spark alive and his legacy connected.
If you are a longtime pro football writer, chances are you have heard from her. A couple of years ago, even though she’s not a football fan and never even knew about that building in Canton, Ohio, Norman embarked on a relentless campaign to have Knox inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. She dug up emails and Twitter handles and eventually contacted every voter while enlisting support letters from several influential former football figures, including Dick Vermeil, Steve Largent, Joe Namath and Pat Haden.
It’s an uphill battle that would be attempted only by someone blinded by faith. Knox ranks 10th in career regular-season wins and is one of only three retired NFL coaches in the top 10 who are not in the Hall of Fame, but his chances are slim because he never coached in a Super Bowl.
“Her phone calls to me were so honest, so earnest,” said Peter King, a Hall of Fame voter who works for Sports Illustrated and NBC. “It felt like such a neat family thing.”
If you are in the sports book world, chances are you are also currently hearing from her. Norman is attempting to self-publish an expanded version of the 1988 autobiography “Hard Knox,” which was written with this columnist during the coach’s glory days with the Seattle Seahawks.
“She just keeps plugging,” Shirley said.
Finally, if you are employed by the Rams, chances are you will soon be hearing from her, as she wants to ensure that the team’s homecoming parade includes memories of the coach whose five consecutive division championships from 1973 to 1977 solidified their previous presence here.
“Pop-Pop has affected the lives of so many people, I just don’t want him to be forgotten,” Norman said.
She is one of the few people her Pop-Pop always remembers. When he was asked about her this week, clear recognition filled a voice that suddenly regained its homey western Pennsylvania edge.
“Ohhh, yeah,” he said simply, as if witnessing an undersized defender fight through a giant blocker, which, when one thinks about it, is exactly what she is doing.
::
Lee Ann Norman not only wears her love for her grandfather on her sleeve, but also has it permanently inked below her shoulder.
The numbers 193-158-1 are tattooed at the top of the right side of her back in honor of Knox’s career record, including playoff games.
“If I’m wearing a tank top, some guys will come up and ask if that is my prison record,” she said. “I say, no, my grandfather was a great football coach and that is what he accomplished.”
They have always had an indelible relationship, the stoic sideline leader and his free-spirited oldest of six grandchildren.
Chuck Knox with his granddaughter, Lee Ann Norman, in an undated photograph.
Chuck Knox with his granddaughter, Lee Ann Norman, in an undated photograph. (Knox Family)

Being the first grandchild, he was very protective of her.

Lee Ann was born in Redlands in 1988 while Knox was living in Seattle coaching the Seahawks. Her family flew there frequently during the season, then would spend summers together at the Knoxes’ La Quinta residence. After Knox retired following his second Rams stint in 1994, she spent much of the rest of her childhood with him in the desert.
“Being the first grandchild, he was very protective of her,” recalled Shirley, who has been married to Chuck for 63 years. “They would do everything together.”
The first interactions between Knox and Lee Ann could be heard on a baby monitor. Knox would be admonished to let her sleep, but he would sneak in to talk to her, unaware that the family was listening in the other room. When she grew older, he insisted on buying her a first ice cream cone, it had to be vanilla, and they had to sing the “I scream” song together.
Once she was old enough to accompany him to the field, she became an influential part of his entourage. Visitors to his office would often find her lying on the floor playing with his watch and rings. Players would carry her into the locker room on their shoulders after games. She once wandered onto a hotel elevator in San Diego and he left a news conference to help find her. Another time, while halfway home after a celebratory postgame dinner, she shrieked that she had left her doll at the fancy restaurant, and Knox ordered his driver to return to pick it up.
Through Lee Ann, folks saw a different side of the tough Knox who is the only coach to lead the Rams to five consecutive double-digit-win seasons with a .782 winning percentage during those five years (54-15-1), a Rams record for any single coaching stint. He was known for simple philosophies known as “Knox-isms” and a run-based style called “Ground Chuck.”
“Chuck Knox was the best coach I ever had,” said former Rams guard Tom Mack, a Hall of Famer. “He always took the time to know each player well enough that he could talk to each player and hit their hot buttons. I never saw another coach like that.”
His Rams highlights included making James Harris the NFL’s first African American regular starting quarterback, and advancing to three NFC title games. His lowlights were losing in all three big games, twice to the Minnesota Vikings, including a 14-10 loss in 1974 that featured a phantom illegal procedure call against Mack nullified a Rams touchdown. He later created the foundation for the Seahawks’ greatness by leading them to their first playoff berth, and after nine seasons there he eventually was inducted into the franchise’s Ring of Honor.
Lee Ann never saw the frustration, only the joy, and shared that with her grandfather, spending long summers together in La Quinta riding around in a golf cart, tending to ducks, fending off coyotes, drinking date shakes, and talking about life. They never talked football. She never cared about football. It wasn’t until later, after she had graduated from California with a degree in molecular and cell biology and was attending medical school at the University of Cincinnati, that she had an epiphany.
“I started reading all these old stories about Pop-Pop and realized he wasn’t just a great grandfather, he was a great coach, and shouldn’t he be getting more recognition for that?” she said. “I thought, this is ridiculous. I had no idea what to do, but I had to do something.”
With a campaign that basically consisted of cold calls to strangers, she went to work on Hall of Fame voters and players, compiling a package of recommendation letters and statistics that she hoped would sway opinions. As one of those voters, Peter King receives lots of pleas, but none quite like this.
“After talking to her a couple of times I thought, this shows what an incredible family Chuck Knox has built,” King said. “There was so much love in her commitment.”
The campaign still didn’t land Knox a spot as one of the finalists, but Norman, who says she is currently seeking a new direction after leaving medical school, is still pushing. She has proposed a new book, and soon she’ll be be nudging the Rams.
Shirley Knox emphasized that the family is happy with Knox’s place in history — “We’ve had a great life, no complaints, no regrets,” she said — but acknowledges appreciation for her granddaughter’s persistence.
“I know Chuck is so proud of her,” Shirley said. “What she is doing means so much to him.”
Knox still occasionally wears a Rams cap. He is still called “Coach” by fans who see him when he visits local coffee shops. Everyone wants to know if he’s excited his old team is back in town, and he smiles and answers “yes” to all of them.
But he often saves his biggest smiles for visits from Lee Ann. The last time she was here, he gently touched her arm and said, “I love you more than anything, you know that.”
At that moment, they both relied on the Knox-ism, “What you do speaks so well, there’s no need to hear what you say.”
As if remembering everything, they said nothing.

oldschoolramfan sez:

My twin brother and I would go to Rams practices and carry the players helmets as they walked to and from practice.

One day Coach Knox called us over, introduced us to Mr. Rosenbloom and told him what we did all those summers……Then, as the conversation ended, Coach Knox looked us both in the eyes and said, “You two young men, keep coming to practices, the players tell me that they love it when you guys are here.”

I’ll never forget that day! Chuck Knox was a great HC!

Man, this is a tough one for me……………

Chuck Knox – The Last Hard Man

Doug Farrar Feb 19, 2005

https://247sports.com/nfl/seattle-seahawks/Article/Chuck-Knox-The-Last-Hard-Man-104175618

“A man must make himself from whatever he is given. ‘Play the hand you’re dealt’ – it was my first and foremost Knoxism. It means look adversity in the eye, then kick the hell out of it.”

To understand Chuck Knox, it may help to know something of the NFL’s earliest days. The primordial ooze of professional football was constituted of hard men, with lives unlike any today. Men with names like “Mule”, “Greasy” and “Bronko” (not to mention the immortal “Johnny Blood”) who most often came from steel cities and farm towns with little more than a desire to make their way in an unforgiving world. And if they could not use education to do so (as many of them could not), then backbreaking toil and violence for hire (the two fundamental tenets of football in its infancy) would suffice when the ceiling of America ’s overflowing population presented itself to them. Professional sports was not an avocation of glamour in the early 20 th century as much as it was a bitter struggle for survival. It was a way out of Hell.

“Eighth-Grade Sewickley”

“You have to understand me and fights. My father always said, don’t come home crying after getting a beating, or you’ll get another beating. He told me, if you’re bigger or equal to him, you should win fairly. If the other guy is bigger, you should grab whatever is near and hit him with it.”

It was into such a world that Charles Robert Knox was born, on April 27,1932, in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. Sewickley was one of a seemingly infinite number of small steel towns in Western Pennsylvania ’s Steel Valley. Knox grew up on Walnut Street in Sewickley, the son of Charlie and Helen Knox. Chuck’s brother Billy rounded out the family. Charlie Knox, as described by his son, was “A short, big-armed, big-necked fellow from Ireland. The part of my build that looks like an ice box, that comes from him…I’ll say this, he was tougher than I’ll ever be.” Knox described Helen Knox as “Tall and big and just as hard, from Scotland. She came over on a different boat. They both migrated west until their paths crossed in Sewickley, where they were married.”

The Knox family had to be tough. Everyone on Walnut Street had to be tough. Charlie Knox found work hard to come by. Helen Knox worked as a maid “for the people who lived on top of the hill – the Alexanders, the Byers, the kind of people whose names you never forgot because they sounded so much richer than yours”, as Knox put it years later. When Charlie Knox finally found employment with the Duquesne Foundry, he signed up for a lifetime of tough work. When his eight hours at Duquesne were done, he’d ride a beer truck. To release the frustration, Charlie Knox would spend many nights out, too late, at the wrong places. And when he did get home, demons were unleashed.

“Old Charlie Knox was a tough S.O.B. He was a big drinker, a tough drinker. He would get mean. I would come over to get ‘Nick” (Knox’ childhood nickname) and I could hear the old man upstairs whaling on him. All those years growing up with Chuck, I never once set foot in his house. Never would.” – Bobby “Mook” Marruca

When Charlie Knox came home from the pool hall or the tavern, Chuck and Billy would feel the sting of his anger. As Knox remembered years later, “He would hit us for coming home late. He would hit us for coming home, period…Sometimes, we would have to climb out of bed and go down to some bar and carry him home in the middle of the night, right about when he was stone drunk and preparing to fight somebody. We would get him inside our apartment and lay him down. Then he would get up and hit us because we hadn’t let him hit the other guy.”

Chuck Knox would eventually come to terms with the way his father was – feeling trapped and lashing out against a world of little opportunity. But that was much later. With mines and mills all around him and hostility and violence framing his own world, the young Chuck Knox knew only one thing: He would get out of Sewickley, whatever it took. Football, he had decided, would be his way out.

“He Was Flat-Out Dirty”

CHARLES KNOX – Behold the athlete. Big husky Nick, hustling forward, hard-hitting tackle, a splendid mimic, jitterbug expert, smooth talker. Find him with George or Mook, but you will have to go to Avalon. Steady worker. “Dust yourself” he says. Democrats’ staunchest defender. – Chuck Knox’ Senior Yearbook, 1950

Through high school, Chuck Knox fell in more and more in love with the game of football. It gave him a sense of self, allowed him to express an innate toughness, and kept him away from a very rough home. He played offensive guard and linebacker for Quaker Valley High (where today, the football team plays in Chuck Knox Stadium), and developed a reputation that was essential for any prospective player of his era:

Chuck Knox hit like the devil. And in the words of his friend Tom Sanders, “All the kids tried to stay away from him during drills. He was flat-out dirty.”

It’s a common theme among those who begin their sporting lives as players and later find fame as leaders of men – Knox was never great, but it was well-known that his hunger for victory was extreme. He would watch upcoming opponents practice, scouting before he really knew what scouting was, and once tore up his arm on a barbed-wire fence running away from a team official who did not appreciate such methods.

What really tore at Knox was that nobody seemed to notice. “Here I was, a senior prep linebacker in football-hot country, and no college was interested.”, Knox recalled years later. But at one of his senior games, a local scout by the name of Tommy “Midget” Perricelli, who was recruiting for central Pennsylvania ’s Juniata College, would see this Knox kid play. Perricelli would also experience the Knox determination firsthand.

“I walk in this locker room and this real tough kid, the toughest kid on the field, walks up to me. He says his name is Chuck Knox. Then he grabs me and starts shouting, “If you just come back for me you’ll be getting a great one”. He’s almost screaming now. I think he’s going to kill me. While this guy is shaking me, I can only think of one thing: I’m coming back. And it will be for him.” – Tommy “Midget” Perricelli

Chuck Knox had finally found a crack in the door.

Escape to Juniata

“You should have heard him in literature class. He once took a Shakespeare reading and turned it into a halftime speech. It was that ‘To be or not to be’ thing. He wasn’t just reading Hamlet, he was coaching Hamlet” – Pat Tarquinio

On August 15, 1950, Chuck Knox waited in front of Prince’s Candy Shop in the Sewickley summer heat for “Midget” to pick him up for the three-hour ride to Juniata College. Knox couldn’t wait in front of his own house because his father opposed the idea of a college education for his son – for Charlie Knox, the mill was good enough for him, and it would be good enough for his son. But having seen what the mill did to his father, Chuck had other ideas. The pull of his father’s voice did carry early on, leading to an episode five weeks in when he tried to leave Juniata, only to have Perricelli come to Sewickley and drive him back to school in a snowstorm. Knox later admitted that he did little in his freshman year except “fight and raise hell”…but two incidents were about to smarten him up.

When Chuck went back home that first summer, “The Old Man” had a job at the mill waiting for him. “It was the longest summer of my life”, he said. “Those damned dirty mills. I’d be working and sweating and the old workers would come up to me and say, ‘See what happens if you don’t get an education?’ They would point to some other young filthy guy, maybe a former local football star, and say, ‘See him? He decided to chase women instead of books. Now, he’s chasing the clock.’ I saw. I saw”, he said.

Knox went back to Juniata after that horrible summer determined to make a go of it in school. What he didn’t know was that he was about to meet the woman who would not only change his life, but help define it.

“On this one Friday night…I saw Chuck for the first time. He was obviously one of those Juniata players who still liked to hang around high school girls. I saw him and was attracted to him and thought, ‘I wonder if this guy is tough enough to ask me to the dance later tonight?’” – Shirley Knox

On that Friday night at Huntington High, one month into his sophomore year, Chuck Knox was indeed tough enough to ask Shirley Rhine to that dance. She got a load of his jitterbug and was smitten. Chuck knew that Shirley was the one. They dated through his second season at Juniata, and things were looking up for Chuck in other ways. He found work as a proctor in one of the dormitories that second summer, made some money, and settled into college life. But as a player, he still carried the fight of his Sewickley days.

“He had been getting fifteen-yard penalties called on us…he just couldn’t stop fighting when he heard the whistle. Now he’s swinging at this kid, and…it cost us a punt inside their ten-yard line. I was so mad after the ref threw Chuck out, I banished him to the team bus, where he sat the rest of the game. The next day in practice, I singled him out in front of the whole team and told him that if he had another late hit called on him all year, I was going to ship his butt back to Sewickley. One more fight, and he’d be spending the next thirty-five years of his life in that mill!” – Juniata head coach Bill Smaltz

Knox finally realized that toughness had its place in football, but that it was intelligence that would move him forward…on the field and in life. He continued to learn and grow as a young man, a process that was accelerated after his junior year when he and Shirley were married. Charlie Knox still didn’t get it – by all accounts, the wedding he wasn’t invited to made him “madder than ever”, but everything changed when Chuck brought his wife and new baby daughter Chris home to Sewickley shortly after his graduation. “I had to go home one last time before entering the work world, to show him that no matter how weak he had made me feel, I found enough strength to grab onto a dream, and that dream had already carried me out of there”, Knox said. “Also, I needed to drop in to see how life used to be, and to show him what he’d missed. In other words, I went home after my senior summer preparing for a fight.”

For once, the elder Knox seemed to understand. “My father saw the baby, he saw how the piece of him had become someone else, a New Knox. It was as if my father recognized in that one little child all I had accomplished and all I was searching for. After twenty-one years, it was only through a little baby that my father finally saw me.”

Now with a college degree and a wife and child, it was time for Chuck Knox to put it together for his family. He knew that he was not a player at the NFL level, but a desire had been planted…he though that just maybe, he could make it as a coach.

Learning the Ropes – Ellwood City, Wake Forest and Kentucky

“I guess I was a little intense, but you have to understand the situation: Western Pennsylvania football was big, and this school was small. Nobody believed in us. It was kind of like every situation I’ve been in, before and since. We didn’t have a chance, so it was my job to find one…I may not have departed there with a bunch of wins, but I left with that little football program thinking big. Sometimes, that’s just as important.”

Immediately after graduation, the only job Knox could find was as an unpaid assistant at his alma mater – followed, soon after, by the opportunity to be “a full-fledged underpaid assistant coach at Tyrone High”, as Knox put it. He made ends meet by teaching during the day, selling cars at night, and waiting for his break. Fortune smiled upon him in the form of a classified ad he saw in a local newspaper for an open high-school coach position in a Pennsylvania town called Ellwood City. Knox remembered that “I knew Ellwood City from my days at Sewickley. It was another tiny fifteen-thousand-person mill town just down the river. I also knew Ellwood was the smallest school in its division, so it was always playing bigger teams, always the underdog. My kind of town, Ellwood City was. And it needed a football coach.”

Throughout his life, Chuck Knox would never stop coaching the underdog, and nobody knew more about living the phrase. He got the Ellwood City job and continued his journey as a teacher and a coach. After a few years at the high school ranks, he received a call in March of 1959 from Paul Amen, the head coach of Wake Forest. When he was told to take the call that day at Ellwood High, he was teaching general science and was busy de-gutting a frog.

Amen wanted to speak to Knox about an assistant position. He wanted someone from western Pennsylvania, as Wake Forest wished to increase their recruiting presence there. Setting up an interview with Amen over the phone and rushing home to tell Shirley, Knox realized one thing: he’d have to get on a plane to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Never having flown before, he spent the next few hours quizzing his wife on the vagaries of concepts like “standby” (if ever there was a man who refused to go through life waiting for reservations, it was Chuck Knox), and prepared himself for the trip and yet another venture into the unknown.

Knox was going up against two coaches who had been recommended by revered Army coach Red Blaik, and he didn’t know what sort of a chance he’d have. What he had going for him were two recommendations…and his wife’s cooking. Longtime Wake Forest assistant Ken Meyer had recruited one of Knox’ players at Ellwood City and came away impressed after an all-night film session at Knox’ house, which ended with a marvelous breakfast cooked by Shirley Knox.

And when Knox was in Amen’s office, Amen called Bill Smaltz, the Juniata coach who had once booted a hotheaded linebacker named Knox off the field after one too many late hits and was now coaching at North Carolina State.

“Bill, this is Paul Amen over at Wake. I got a question for you.”
Silence.
“Doing just fine, Bill. The question is, being from western Pennsylvania, and knowing the hundreds if high-school coaches up there, if you had to hire one from that area for your staff, who would it be?”
Silence. Incredible, drawn-out, sweat-producing silence.
“Thanks, Bill.”
Amen put down the phone, and in his most solemn military manner, he turned to me.
“Said he would take this fella named Knox. Chuck Knox.”

Knox was told to go home, and that Amen would call in three or four days. When the call came, it was to offer him the position of line coach at Wake Forest …at what turned out to be a pay cut. Knox weighed the stakes on both sides and didn’t hesitate. He took the job immediately.

Amen liked Knox’ attention to detail and his intensity…what he found worrisome was the “CHUCK” tattoo from his high school days. Seems that the Walnut Street Gang were getting tattoos to prove how tough they were, and Chuck joined right in. Wake Forest was a Baptist university, and there were very strict rules regarding the decorum of coaches. No drinking. T-shirts under the open-necked coaching shirts. You answered the phone a certain way – “Wake Forest University, Chuck Knox speaking.” Knox tried to hide the tattoo on his arm with longer and longer sleeves, until the team doctor convinced him to get it shaved right off. Two days before his first recruiting trip, driving for seven days with Ken Meyer.

As Meyer later said, “Why did Chuck cut that damn thing off right before a trip? I’ll never know. But he couldn’t drive the damn car, because he couldn’t hold his right hand up…Coming home, right about West Virginia somewhere, the stitches finally split. Blood everywhere, a guy with an open wound in the front seat of my car. It was some trip.”

Knox was rough, but ready to learn. And teach. Wake Forest would see the genesis of his most interesting coaching tool – one that would stay with him long into his Seahawks days.

“I would enjoy watching his players come running when he blew his whistle, hooting and hollering and ready to fight. But there was a problem. Chuck kept wanting to jump in there and demonstrate blocking techniques on them. I told him to be careful just how far he went. He didn’t have pads, he didn’t have a helmet, and they did. I told him that sometimes players, in what they claim is extra effort, will go out of their way to pop a coach.” – Paul Amen

Knox felt that he wasn’t doing his job unless he was in the trenches, butting heads. Presiding in a high tower with a clipboard and a whistle, as much as that may have worked for some coaches, wasn’t ever going to be Chuck Knox’ style. Of course, any coach who mixes it up with his players without a helmet will pay the price. “I have all kinds of scars on my forehead from overzealous players who wanted to take a shot when they saw a coach in a three-point stance with his hat turned backward”, Knox said. Proof that you can take the boy out of Sewickley…

The first thing Knox had to master at Wake Forest was the art of recruiting – specifically in Western Pennsylvania, where word had spread about the local boy who had made good.. As he recalled later, “We were never on the kind of budget where we could simply fly up to Pittsburgh and rent a car for a couple of weeks. We would borrow a car from some alumnus and drive it up through Royal Oak, up to Staunton Military Academy, up on to Winchester, hop on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, make some calls off there, turn around and do it all in reverse.”

More intriguing were the backdoor recruiting stories in those days. National Letter of Intent Day wasn’t even a gleam in anyone’s eye in the early 1960’s, so all hell would frequently break loose when several schools were bird-dogging the same player. “We had a lot of back-stabbing and badmouthing going on, a lot of everything happening to convince poor high-school kids to save some coach’s job. I’ve seen coaches publicly call each other liars. I’ve seen fist fights between coaches in school auditoriums, right in front of cheerleaders”, Knox said.

But by all accounts, nobody recruited Western PA better than Chuck Knox. He spoke their language, and the parents of those athletes – so often the descendants of the same life Knox himself grew up in – would welcome him in as one of their own. And as he put it, he had a few rules for recruiting, “The Eighth-Grade Sewickley Way”:

You can buy the father, but never the mother. “Some fathers would rationalize and go for it. The pitch sounded good. But don’t dare try it on the mother. The difference is, the mother is willing to get on her hands and knees and scrub that floor so her son can go to a good college. Money to her is nothing.”
Talk to the kid like he’s already at your school. “Say things like, ‘We just had a barbecue here today with all of your future teammates. We missed you.’”
When he comes for his one official visit, leave nothing to chance.“When the kid flies in, do you have a good route planned fro the airport to the school? Will you drive him through the nice part of town, no matter how remote it may be from the actual school? And for Pete’s sake, does everybody know his name?”

In his two years at Wake Forest. Chuck Knox learned a lot about recruiting, a lot about coaching, and a great deal about life. So much so that he was ready when the next call came – from the program coached by a man who would prove to be his ultimate mentor.

The Biggest Step

Blanton Collier is best-known as the man who coached the Cleveland Browns to a 79-40-2 record from 1963-1970. He led the Browns to their last NFL Championship in 1964, never had a losing record, and has been a finalist for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. But when Knox met him in 1961, he was the brilliant head coach at Kentucky. Collier spent eight years with the Wildcats in-between his stints in Cleveland – he was one of Paul Brown’s assistant’s there before – and ran a pro-style program that was a perfect training ground for a young coach like Knox who would eventually spend over thirty years in the NFL. What Blanton Collier taught Chuck Knox was invaluable, and Knox knew it. Recommended by Collier assistant Bill Crutchfield, he was hired as a line coach. Problem was, Collier wasn’t quite sure which line.

“I knew that when he accepted me as a University of Kentucky assistant, in the long run it would be the break of my career. But it wasn’t certain at the start that there was even a job I could fill. When Collier interviewed me, he wasn’t sure whether he was looking for an offensive or defensive line coach. The offensive line coach at the time was Bill Arnsparger, and he was willing to take either position. Because my specialty was offensive lines, he went ahead and gave me that job and moved Arnsparger to the defensive line. Guess who later drew up the brilliant defenses of the great (1970’s) Miami Dolphins teams? Bill Arnsparger. In that sense, Collier’s decision was a break for both of us.”

In truth, Knox was walking into a Murderers’ Row of coaches – Collier’s former assistant Don Shula had recently left Kentucky for a job with the Detroit Lions – and along with Arnsparger, the staff included five future head coaches (Knox, Arnsparger, Howard Schnellenberger, Leeman Bennett and John North), a player personnel director (George Boone) and one of Tom Landry’s long-time assistants in Dallas (Ermal Allen). Presiding above it all was the brilliant Collier – as Knox described him, “The most academic of all coaches, a theorist with a 150 IQ, (and) the only coach in history who needed to keep squelching rumors about his moving to the state capitol to become superintendent of schools.”

Collier was the one who made Knox realize that coaching was teaching, and that teaching was, above all, the ability to inspire learning. What he learned was that his players were good enough if he was good enough to teach them. From Blanton Collier, Chuck Knox learned that without accountability, coaching is impossible. From Collier, Knox learned that honest discussion among a coaching staff was the only way that a staff’s value would be fully realized – Collier would occasionally bring in half-baked plays and ask his coaches to review them just to see if they could sniff out a loser. From Collier, Knox learned that sometimes, the simple turn of a phrase could make an enormous difference.

“He came in once after looking at films of a loss, after our offensive linemen let people get through them. He said, ‘I don’t understand how we can teach these principles and then look st the films and see that the players aren’t getting it done’”

Having learned his theories by then, I looked down and said, ‘Doggone it, I’ve just got to do a better job’”.

He said, ‘Well, you’re working pretty hard. Maybe you just need a different approach. When talking about blocking, you always use the phrase, ‘follow-through,’ and it’s not sinking in. Instead, why not try a more descriptive term. Why don’t you call that technique a ‘stick’? See if that registers with them.’”

I went out there all charged up and told my players, ‘I want all of you to stop trying to ‘follow through.’ I want you to start ‘sticking.’ ‘Stick’ through the other guy, stick it to him. Forget about all else but stick, stick, stick.’”

That day in practice, and for the rest of the season, we were sticking defensive linemen all the way up into the stands.

It was Knox’ finishing school…and the frosting on the cake was applied just in time. Collier left Kentucky for Cleveland after the 1962 season, but he had enough time and enough faith in his young assistant to make a call to Weeb Ewbank of the AFL’s embryonic New York Jets. The Jets had been the New York Titans since 1960, but bad play and underfunded ownership left them as a ward of the league until Sonny Werblin bought the team, renamed it, and brought in Ewbank from the Colts’ dynasty. Collier told Ewbank that Knox would be a great offensive line coach for his Jets, and Ewbank made the call. Knox enjoyed relative security with Kentucky, but he could not turn down a chance to make the leap to the culmination of his football dream.

After a long, improbable journey, Chuck Knox was going to the pros.

Stay tuned for Part Two…when Chuck Knox recruits the AFL’s biggest star, learns quite a bit about mercurial team owners, and shows a young Seattle Seahawks team that winning is fundamental.

All italicized quotes in this article are taken from the book “Hard Knox: The Life of an NFL Coach” by Chuck Knox and Bill Plaschke. ©1988, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

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Chuck Knox: The Last Hard Man, Part Two

A New York Minute
Knox’ ascent to the “pro” level wasn’t what he might have hoped, at least at first – the Jets of 1963 were recovering from Wismer’s gross mismanagement, under a new ownership collective led by Sonny Werblin. There would be three consecutive 5-8-1 seasons for the team from ’63 through ’65 as they (and Knox) learned to win in the fledgling American Football League. Ewbank, for his part, was frantically busy trying to put a team together – the Jets had lost all their draft picks in a bankruptcy settlement, according to Knox – and as Ewbank said, “We had three teams back then. We had today’s team on the field, yesterday’s team checking out, and tomorrow’s team driving in.”

Assembling a motley crew in New York’s Van Cortland Park, Ewbank and his staff developed a system in which they would shout, “Ruby! Ruby!” if they saw a player with potential. This to discourage violence from those players who were not deemed worthy. Knox later said that “We got guys who had never finished high school, guys who were forty years old…we had the daggonest, toughest crew of characters there was. Some of the meanest guys I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen some.”

After the tryout camp ended, Ewbank told the players to expect a call or telegram if they were chosen – no “Turk” to ask for a player’s playbook here. That didn’t stop two malcontents from arriving at training camp a month later, saying that they had never heard from the team, and that they’d be happy to whip anybody necessary to prove their determination. “I love that attitude. But not in guys who, if they couldn’t find a fight with a football player, would settle for a piece of me.” A call to the local police set things right.

Knox was prepared to use more conventional means of scouting, especially in one particular case. The Jets needed a quarterback to get to the next level, and Knox was committed to a young wizard from his own backyard. He had seen this kid playing basketball at Beaver Falls Junior High when he coached at Elwood City, and Knox and Blanton Collier had tried to recruit this kid to come to Kentucky…only to be outdone by Alabama’s “Bear” Bryant. Knox did not intend to be outdone again.

“Chuck was definitely a factor in my coming to the Jets. He was the first one who whispered my name to them. He came from my neighborhood. He spoke my language. I was comfortable with him. He was no bull. It’s funny how people from Western Pennsylvania seem to stick together, but that’s what it was. I was going to a big city, but with Chuck there, I know I would be taken care of.” – Joe Namath

After selecting Tulsa quarterback Jerry Rhome in a special redshirt draft in 1965 and trading his rights to Houston, Werblin and Ewbank turned their attention to Namath on Knox’ recommendation. The true test would be in signing him – Namath eventually turned down a $389,000 contract from the NFL’s St. Louis Cardinals and signed a $427,000 deal with the Jets, the biggest contract in the history of sports at that time, and one that would change the face of pro football forever.

But that was later. Namath had to grow into the pro game, and part of Knox’ charge was to help him do so. Years later, Knox recalled a game against the Chiefs in Namath’s rookie season. “He was struggling and, as is often the case with kids, the harder he tried, the worse he got. At halftime, the coaches were giving the standard directives about concentration and reading the coverages. After the speeches, I called the kid over.”

”Chuck told me not to worry anymore about reading any damn coverages. He told me to go back to throwing the damn ball like I always had. That’s that way he talked. He said, ‘Pick a guy and let it fly’. That’s all he said. No big strategy. Just throw it. One of the best halftime talks I’ve ever heard.” – Joe Namath

Knox was a pioneer during this time, as well – according to Ewbank, Knox was the first coach to teach offensive linemen to block with their hands. “He was the first person to even out things between offensive and defensive linemen,” Ewbank later said. “At the time, the defense could do anything short of killing you. Chuck changed all that.”

Knox’ reasoning was “Eighth-Grade Sewickley”, as he might say – pure survival. “(It) was simple: Act like you are guarding a guy in man-to-man basketball. Just like you should always stay between your man and the basket, you should stay between your man and the quarterback…Back then, defenders were allowed to grab and shove and twist and everything.” To counter the nefarious head-slap, Knox would hit his linemen over the head with rubber baseball bats until they were trained not to flinch on contact.

These techniques and their teaching were so effective, that it was the line Knox assembled which blocked for Namath and Matt Snell in Super Bowl III when the Jets shocked the Colts and the world in January of 1969. Knox would not be on the sidelines for that game, although he was given a great deal of credit after the fact for that Super Bowl victory.

Knox had moved on to bigger money, and the NFL. It was not the last time he would miss the Super Bowl by an achingly small margin.

Young Lions

”First day of camp, and here comes this new line coach. Doesn’t so much walk as strut; stocky guy; says his name is Knox. I miss an incidental block in an incidental drill, and then I hear this foghorn. ‘Know something, Kowal?’ he says; ‘You’re a sissy.’

I look up. I stare. This is my second year, and nobody had ever talked to me like that. I wanted to fight the son of a gun right there. I get ready to charge – hell, he’s not much older than we are – but a teammate grabs me.” – Former Lions guard Bob Kowalkowski

In the late summer of 1967, Knox accepted an offer from Detroit head coach Joe Schmidt to coach the Lions’ offensive line. He was given an impressive salary for the time ($24,000 per year), and headed to the team’s training camp at Cranbrook College in Eastern Michigan with a head full of steam and a heart full of dreams. Most of all, Knox felt that he’d been through enough to stop playing games – he would be who he was as a coach, and play no more games. That was the end of it.

What he had “inherited” was yet another motley crew – the Lions had amassed a 4-9-1 record the year before. Once again, Chuck Knox was starting from scratch. Linemen like Kowalkowski and Rocky Freitas (of whom Knox once said, “My biggest question was whether he was a football player or a throw pillow”) would learn the hard way that this new coach would not go for anything but maximum effort. In time, they would learn to love him.

That was down the road.

The Lions saw a bit of playoff action during Knox’ time there, losing 5-0 to Dallas in the NFC Divisional round in 1970. But mostly, what Knox got from his six years in Detroit was the final sanction that he was ready to be a professional football coach. He also got the respect of the players who once despised him. The dilapidated line Knox took over eventually became the class of the league. Freitas became an All-Pro. The line of Flanagan, Freitas, Walton, Cottrell and Kowalkowski played in the NFL for a combined forty-eight years. Nobody questioned Chuck Knox’ ability to lead and motivate anymore.

Now, it was time for Knox to do it with a full team.

“After Knox called me a sissy, I couldn’t stand to talk to the man. But in the winter after his second season there, he heard that I was a good fisherman and invited me with some coaches north on a fishing trip. I was stunned, but I thought ‘What the hell?’

”Once we got there we baited and drank Scotch, baited and drank beer, then threw away the bait and just drank. Finally, when we were alone and pretty sauced, I cornered Knox. I told him, ‘You know, a couple of seasons ago, I wanted to clean your clock. I wanted to kill you, literally kill you, for calling me a sissy.’

“’Really?’ Knox said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me then? I could have explained it to you then. I could have explained about patting some guys on the back and kicking other guys in the butt, and about how I had to check each guy for an inner flame. Call you a name was the best way I knew how.’

“I thought about it for a while and decided – Yeah, I understood.” – Bob Kowalkowski

Ram Tough

”I had coached nineteen years, ten of them as a pro assistant, four of them as a college assistant, five of them at the high-school level. I had just recently been slapped in the face and cast out into football oblivion by a general manager (Detroit’s Russ Thomas), who thought he would never hear from me again. I had never played pro ball. I had not played big-time college ball. I had no big-league connections, and I had more friends in Sewickley than in any NFL town. And suddenly, here I was, the head coach of the fastest team in the fastest lane in America.” – Chuck Knox

After the 1972 season, Knox received two phone calls: One from Detroit’s Schmidt, who told Knox that he was retiring as the head coach of the Lions, and Don Klosterman, the general manager of the Los Angeles Rams, who wanted to fly Knox out to California for an interview for the team’s head coaching position. After trying unsuccessfully to talk Schmidt out of retiring (and being told by Lions’ management that his own assistant’s job wouldn’t be guaranteed), Knox got on that plane. He held little hope, given that the Rams were estimated to be interviewing over twenty candidates for the position of head coach. But in January of 1973, Knox got his first chance to be an NFL head coach after two interviews with Klosterman and Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom.

The 1972 Rams were a confused mess, a 6-7-1 non-entity led by former coach Tommy Prothro and staffed with veterans who weren’t pulling their weight. Knox took immediate action, trading franchise quarterback Roman Gabriel to the Eagles for receiver Harold Jackson. He traded DT Coy Bacon to the Chargers for quarterback John Hadl, who became the NFC’s MVP in Knox’ first year there. In 1974, he would trade Hadl to Green Bay for two first-round draft picks, two second-round picks and a third-round pick. He cut the dead weight and gave starting time to talented youngsters Jack Youngblood, Jack “Hacksaw” Reynolds and Fred Dryer, creating a terrifying defense that never finished worse than fifth in points and yards allowed during Knox’ tenure. He plucked a talented second-year running back by the name of Lawrence McCutcheon off the inactive list – McCutcheon would run for over 1,000 yards in 1973 and lead the Rams in rushing every year that Knox was in L.A. It was a magical year, the kind of year when everything goes right. Chuck Knox’ 1973 Rams finished 12-2, and Knox was named Coach of the Year.

Knox pulled information and inspiration from everywhere – beating the Cowboys with a Hail Mary read call from Hadl, challenging Falcons head coach Norm Van Brocklin to a fistfight, and telling his players that no excuses would ever be accepted. After the team looked dismal in an 0-3-1 preseason in 1973, Knox addressed his team.

”Outside this locker room there are thousands of Doubting Thomases. The boat is empty; they have taken not only the life preservers but the oars. Even the rats have deserted us. The only people who will keep us afloat are the ones in this locker room. It’s us against them. And we will not let them win. We will keep it afloat.” – Chuck Knox

From 1973 to 1977, Knox’ Rams won at least ten games every season, won their division every year (making Knox the only coach besides Paul Brown to win his division in his first five seasons as a head coach), and went to three NFC Championship games in a row from 1974 to 1976. Knox’ regular-season record in L.A. was 54-15-1…yet it was never enough for the fans, many of the players and the team’s management. More and more, Rosenbloom displayed dissatisfaction and impatience as Knox failed again and again to get his team past the Vikings and Cowboys and into the Super Bowl.

Former Rams’ defensive end Merlin Olsen shared his thoughts on the Rams’ famed postseason drought years later. “If making it to the Super Bowl is the only measure of a man’s career, that’s sad. If it’s the only method by which Chuck is judged, that’s criminal,” Olsen said. “But I’ll tell you what we thought he did back then…He considered it his first responsibility just to get our floundering team to respectability. He put in a risk-free offense designed not necessarily to win, but to not lose. This worked fine until playoff time, when we faced teams as good or better than us.

”He wasn’t willing to take the chances you have to take to beat teams like that,” Olsen continued. “Therefore, we couldn’t get what we needed to win the big ones. In big games, our risk-free offense turned on us.”

Knox offered no apologies in retrospect, explaining that keeping things simple made sense with a young team. He had taken the Rams from the second division to the precipice, but the precipice wasn’t enough for anyone involved. Rosenbloom became more vocal, questioning Knox’ decision to replace Hadl with James Harris (one of the first starting black quarterbacks in NFL history, and the first to start a playoff game) and dismissing Knox’ conservative strategies. Rosenbloom wanted a vertical offense, regardless of the personnel or the risk. Clearly, the marriage between owner and coach was doomed to failure, no matter how successful it may have seemed on the surface.

After the 1976 season, Knox went to Rosenbloom and said he wasn’t happy. He had heard of a head coaching vacancy in Detroit, and he wanted out of Los Angeles. Rosenbloom responded by telling the Lions that they could have Knox – in exchange for seven of their most coveted players. Needless to say, that “offer” was rejected, and Knox served the last year of his first five-year contract under Rosenbloom just trying to hold the team together. After a divisional playoff loss to the Vikings, Chuck Knox had coached his last game with the Rams.

He just didn’t know where he’d be going next.

Knox actually signed a second five-year contract with Rosenbloom after the 1977 season, but both sides knew the score. Knox had been introduced to Ralph Wilson, the owner of the Buffalo Bills, by Melvin Durslag of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. Durslag actually helped broker the deal that brought Knox to Buffalo in exchange for a sixth-round draft pick that the Rams never received.

“We all knew that Chuck was about to be let out by Carroll, who said his offense was putting this town to sleep. Entertainment capital of the world, Carroll said, and Chuck is making them yawn. Chuck was a goner.” – Melvin Durslag

Problem was that Wilson and Rosenbloom weren’t talking to each other, a fallout from an incident in which Rosenbloom had tried to “steal” O.J. Simpson from the Bills. Wilson, Knox and their attendant associates did the deal in Durslag’s house without Rosenbloom’s knowledge. Rosenbloom shrugged, hired Ray Malavasi, and finally got his Super Bowl appearance in January of 1980, when the Rams lost to the Steelers. Once again, Knox’ team went to the Super Bowl…and once again, Knox was nowhere to be found when it happened.

Buffalo Soldier

”Ralph Wilson was a non-meddler, all right. He had ignored this team right to the edge of chaos. Correct that. They had long since passed chaos.” – Chuck Knox

Knox’ Bills played to type – a team in upheaval with dissatisfied players and less-than-optimal ownership that desperately needed leadership. Knox was to provide that leadership again. He first unloaded an unhappy O.J. Simpson on the San Francisco 49ers in a groundbreaking trade which gave Buffalo the draft picks that would later, through use or trade, acquire running back Joe Cribbs and Hall of Fame quarterback Jim Kelly. In his five years in Buffalo, Knox created a two-time playoff team from a moribund franchise with a pathetic scouting department and an absentee owner. And it all ended, incredibly, when Wilson refused to give Knox a raise after the 1982 season.

Looking for a change and some stability, Knox took a call from the Rams, who asked him to come back and coach the team that was then owned by Rosenbloom’s widow, Georgia Frontiere. While he considered that offer, he received a call from Mike McCormack of the Seahawks.

Nobody knew it then, but the young Seahawks were on the verge of their wonder years…followed by a long spell of cancerous ownership that would take Chuck Knox down with it.

Statement from Los Angeles Rams on Passing of Former Head Coach Chuck Knox

TheRams.com

http://www.therams.com/news-and-events/article-1/Statement-from-Los-Angeles-Rams-on-Passing-of-Former-Head-Coach-Chuck-Knox/3a0e7bfc-1ea4-44c8-85d0-7a6d3a5d28db

We are saddened by the loss of Chuck Knox, a legendary coach and member of the Los Angeles Rams family. He established a winning culture and a legacy that will never be forgotten, being the only coach to lead the Rams to five consecutive double-digit-win seasons. The memories and accomplishments that Coach Knox left behind will continue to inspire us and Rams fans. We hold his family in our thoughts and prayers during this difficult time.

JIM MURRAY

Ground Chuck Just a Pilot Away From Air Knox

September 16, 1990

http://articles.latimes.com/1990-09-16/sports/sp-1288_1_chuck-knox

SEATTLE — They called him Ground Chuck. They called his football the School of Hard Knox. They said he played football 10 yards at a time, the way sandhogs built tunnels under rivers. Or miners dug coal. They recommended his teams wear lanterns and carry canaries.

They called his team the Seahawks, but the wise guys said they should be called the Moles. They got touchdowns the way gophers get plants.

But he did more with less than anyone who ever coached the game. After all, even Vince Lombardi had Bart Starr. Tom Landry had Roger Staubach. Chuck Noll had Terry Bradshaw. Paul Brown had Otto Graham. Don Shula had Bob Griese. Dan Reeves, John Elway. John Madden had Snake Stabler, Tom Flores, Jim Plunkett. Even Mike Ditka had Jim McMahon. And of course, Bill Walsh had Joe Montana.

Chuck Knox had Dave Krieg. And Ron Jaworski. And Jim Zorn. And Pat Haden. And James Harris. And Joe Ferguson. These weren’t your basic Slingin’ Sammy Baughs.

Chuck Knox is “the best coach never to get to the Super Bowl.” He is, probably, the only coach ever to be fired after winning five successive divisional championships and going 12-2, 10-4, 12-2, 10-3-1 and 10-4 in the process.

The owner complained he didn’t look good winning. Not Hollywood enough. It reminded you of the woman who screamed hysterically for someone to save her baby son from drowning, and when someone did, she looked accusingly at him and said, “Where’s his hat?”

He had gotten his team within one foot of the Super Bowl twice. The first time, his Rams had the ball on the Minnesota one-foot line, fourth down and goal to go in a scoreless tie. They lined up for a chip-shot–no, a tap-in–field goal. It was blocked–and a Minnesota safety ran the ball back 90 yards for a touchdown. The Rams never recovered.

Another year, the Rams had the ball on the Minnesota one-foot line again, first down and goal to go, when the Minnesota tackle, Alan Page, with nothing to lose but a six-inch penalty, jumped offside. But the official ruled the Ram guard, Tom Mack, had drawn him off. After the Rams were moved back five yards, their quarterback, James Harris, on a rollout, threw an interception. Goodby, Super Bowl, once again.

Knox got shuffled off to Buffalo after that, and the next year the Rams fluked into the Super Bowl on a 9-7 record, the worst to make that summit. The gods were trying to tell Knox something.

Wherever he went, he never got a quarterback. Don Shula got Dan Marino. Chuck Knox got Dan Doornink. Bill Parcells got Phil Simms. Knox got Brian Bosworth.

Knox was trying to win no-limit poker hands with two treys.

Were the wounds self-inflicted? Well, when Chuck Knox took the Ram job in 1972, he was quoted as saying that quarterback was “just another position.” He enlarged on the philosophy by explaining that if the supporting cast were strong enough, the quarterback needn’t be all-world.

It was just as well he felt that way. Because he had to go to war against the all-worlds, like Fran Tarkenton and Roger Staubach, with Haden, Harris and Hadl.

He almost brought it off. Knox teams were–like the coach–resourceful, patient, smart, dogged, undiscourageable. An elite unit. They just had one weakness. Knox played the cards he was dealt–and he always came up an ace short. Whenever he called, the other guys had a higher hole card: the quarterback.

At Buffalo, the quarterback was a good Joe–but Ferguson, not Montana or Namath. Knox had to win games the old-fashioned way, by wagon train, not jet.

Hardly any team has ever made the Super Bowl without that old ace in the hole, the super quarterback.

Knox came closer than anybody. Has he had occasion to revise his earlier thinking? Is quarterback more than “just another position?” Is Ground Chuck about to become Air Knox?

Throughout their history, his Seahawks have drafted running backs No. 1 (Curt Warner, John L. Williams), or linebackers (Bosworth, Tony Woods) or tackles (Andy Heck, Cortez Kennedy). Quarterbacks are nowhere on their charts.

Knox sighs and says: “When I first expressed my opinion (about the relative value of quarterbacks), it was a different ballgame. Offensive linemen could not extend their arms to pass-block. Wide receivers could be checked at the line of scrimmage, even blocked below the waist, bumped and run with. You could use reasonable force to discourage quarterbacks, there was no in-the-grasp rule.

“Every rule that’s been put into effect the last few years was designed to help the quarterback, make his role more decisive, more effective. It has become more of a quarterback’s medium, this game.

“Now, there are two kinds of quarterbacks. There is what I call the ‘because of’ quarterback and the ‘with’ quarterback. You win ‘because of’ Joe Montana or John Elway. You win ‘with’ Phil Simms or Doug Williams.”

Chuck Knox has never had either kind–a “because of” or even a “with” quarterback–in his history. “To get a ‘because of’ quarterback, you have to go 2-12,” he explains. “And if you do that, you’re out of a job. Somebody else gets the benefit of the ‘because of’ quarterback. If, of course, you can find one.”

Knox’s teams are landlocked because they don’t have a pilot. They’re like a gleaming new DC-10 that can only taxi from runway to runway, an aircraft carrier restricted to delivering tanks. If he had ever had even a “with” quarterback, he’d go from Ground Chuck to Air Knox, and the Super Bowl today might be known as Knox-ville, instead of the sovereign state of Montana.

Sam Farmer@LATimesfarmer
“I never had a guy that breathed intensity into a group of men before kickoff as well as he did.” — Jackie Slater on the late Chuck Knox.