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.

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.

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……………

from the wiki:

…

Chuck Knox

Charles Robert Knox (born April 27, 1932) is a former American football coach at the high school, collegiate and professional levels. He is best remembered as head coach of three National Football League (NFL) teams, the Los Angeles Rams (twice), Seattle Seahawks, and Buffalo Bills.

Early life

Knox was born in the Pittsburgh suburb of Sewickley, Pennsylvania. Whenever Knox felt something was common sense, he would say it was “eighth-grade Sewickley.”

The son of a steel worker who had emigrated from Ireland and a Scottish-born mother, Knox developed into a 190-pound (86 kg) tackle at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, playing on both sides of the ball and serving as co-captain of the 1953 unit, the first undefeated team in school history. He also competed in track and graduated in 1954.

Early coaching career

Knox then served as an assistant at Juniata that fall. He stayed in the Keystone State the following year as an assistant coach at Tyrone High School, then began the first of three years as head coach at Ellwood City High School in 1956. During his first year at Ellwood, Knox had just 18 players, but by his final year, 85 players were on the squad.

Building on his success, Knox then moved back to the colleges, serving two seasons as an assistant under Paul Amen at Wake Forest University in 1959. He then joined Blanton Collier’s staff at the University of Kentucky in 1961, and stayed the following year under new mentor Charlie Bradshaw. In both these places, Knox learned the concepts of organization, discipline and a focus on fundamentals. While at Kentucky, Knox was on the staff of Bradshaw’s infamous first team, which was known forever as the Thin Thirty.

On May 8, 1963, he was hired as offensive line coach of the American Football League’s New York Jets by head coach Weeb Ewbank. Over the next four years as the lead contact for recruiting quarterback, Joe Namath, Knox helped build a line that would protect Namath, eventually leading to a victory over the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. Unfortunately for Knox, by voluntarily leaving the Jets in 1967 he denied himself what would have been the only Super Bowl ring in his career as the Jets won the World Championship in 1968.

Knox then moved to the Detroit Lions on February 13, 1967 under new head coach Joe Schmidt, spending six seasons in the Motor City. Despite some impressive stretches, the Lions only reached the postseason once during this period, losing a 5-0 road contest to the Dallas Cowboys in 1970. However, Knox developed effectively cohesive offensive lines and developed pass-blocking techniques that are now standard in blocking fundamentals. Additionally, he proved a progressive coach by playing Bill Cottrell, an African American, at center. “There was an unwritten rule back then”, said Cottrell in Hard Knox: The Life of an NFL Coach. “No black quarterbacks, no black middle linebackers, no black centers.” Because of Knox’s liberal views and ability to relate to players on such a personal level, African American players nicknamed him, “Dolomite.”

Head coaching career

When Tommy Prothro was dismissed on January 24, 1973, Knox was hired as head coach of the Rams.

Sometimes referred to as ‘Ground Chuck’ for his team’s emphasis on its rushing attack, Knox used a comeback year by veteran quarterback John Hadl to lead the Rams to a 12-2 record during his first season, winning the NFC West title. Knox earned NFC Coach of the Year honors, but in the first round of the playoffs, the team lost to the Cowboys, beginning what would be a frustrating string of play-off defeats for Knox.

John Hadl became the 1973 NFC Most Valuable Player under Knox, proof that the passing dimension of his offense was as significant as the run game in his system. Six games into the 1974 season, Knox traded John Hadl, whose performance had diminished from his MVP ’73 season, to the Green Bay Packers for an unprecedented two first round picks, two second round picks and a third round pick. Knox started James Harris for the remainder of the 1974 season. Harris became the NFL’s first African American regular quarterback. Despite two and a half successful seasons, including a 12 and 2 record in 1975 with Harris under center, Some Rams fans remained critical of Harris’ play. Eventually, Coach Knox, under pressure from owner Carroll Rosenbloom, was forced to bench Harris in favor of Pat Haden.

Under Knox the Rams won five straight NFC West championships. However each season they faltered in the playoffs. They lost three consecutive NFC Championship games from 1974 to 1976, two of them to the Minnesota Vikings. In the team’s rainy first round home playoff game against the Vikings on Monday December 26, 1977, quarterback Pat Haden was having problems handling the wet ball and moving the team. Joe Namath was warming up in preparation for what seemed to be a Hollywood ending in the making, but Knox hesitated and the Rams lost again in what was subsequently called the “Mud Bowl”, 14-7. That was it as far as owner Carroll Rosenbloom was concerned and Knox got out before he could get fired. In five seasons as the Rams head coach the team had won five straight NFC West titles with five different starting quarterbacks (John Hadl, Ron Jaworski, Pat Haden, James Harris, and Joe Namath) and had a regular season record of 54-15-1 but a play-off record of only 3-5.

On January 11, 1978, Knox left the Rams to sign a $1.2 million, six-year contract with the Bills. The move was in response to the continuing conflict between Knox and team owner Carroll Rosenbloom, with Knox taking over a team that had won five of 28 games during the previous two seasons.

In his first year (under the new 16-game schedule), Knox led the Bills to a 5-11 mark. Just two years later, the Bills won the AFC East title with an 11-5 record, but dropped a close battle with the high-powered San Diego Chargers in the divisional playoffs. The following year, his team defeated the Jets in a wild card clash, but then fell to the Cincinnati Bengals. After a 4-5 strike-shortened season in 1982, Knox failed to come to terms on a new contract with team owner Ralph Wilson, and left to accept the head coaching position with the Seahawks on January 26, 1983.

During his first year in the Northwest, Knox led the team to its first playoff berth, beat the Denver Broncos 31-7 in the wildcard game and then upset the Miami Dolphins 27-20 in the Orange Bowl in the second round. However, the dream died in the AFC Championship game when the Seahawks fell to the Los Angeles Raiders 30-14. Subsequent seasons would see the Seahawks remain competitive, but did not reach a conference championship game again during his tenure, despite winning Seattle’s first AFC West Division Title in 1988.

After nine years with Seattle, Knox left on December 27, 1991, having become the first NFL head coach to win division titles with three different teams. Looking to recapture the magic of two decades earlier, Knox returned to the Rams as head coach in 1992. While his tenure saw Jerome Bettis blossom into a star, his teams finished last in the NFC West in each of his three seasons. Additionally, his run-oriented offense was considered too predictable by 1990s NFL standards. He was fired on January 9, 1995.

Knox retired with a mark of 186 wins, 147 losses and 1 tie record, with his son, Chuck, Jr., keeping the family’s name alive as an NFL assistant coach, most recently as defensive backs coach of the Minnesota Vikings until 2006.

In 2005, Knox donated $1 million to his alma mater, Juniata, to endow a chair in history, his major at the school. The donation was the largest of many contributions by Knox, with the institution renaming the school’s football stadium in his honor in 1998. Quaker Valley High School in Knox’s hometown of Sewickley, Pennsylvania has also named its football stadium in his honor

In reporting about Knox’s $1 million donation, the Seattle Times noted that Knox has been extremely generous in donating substiantial money to Juniata and his old high school. The Times also noted that Knox left the games before coaches were paid the large sum of salaries common today and reporters asked whether he was donating away a substantial amount of his retirement fund.

Knox answered the reporters this way: “sure it is (a lot of money)…..that’s what it was going to take to do it”

On September 25, 2005 at age 73, Knox was inducted into the Seattle Seahawks Ring of Honor at Qwest Field in Seattle and is regularly under consideration for nomination into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. In 2015, the Professional Football Researchers Association named Knox to the PFRA Hall of Very Good Class of 2015

DA maintains he had a case against Lions coach Matt Patricia

http://www.theredzone.org/Blog-Description/EntryId/70024/DA-maintains-he-had-a-case-against-Lions-coach-Matt-Patricia

It wasn’t a lack of evidence that prevented the sexual-assault case against Matt Patricia from going to court, Zach Braziller of the New York Post reports.. The case against the new Lions head coach and a football friend from 22 years ago wasn’t tried because the accuser changed her mind about testifying, Cameron County (Texas) District Attorney Luis Saenz told the Detroit Free Press.

“We don’t like to lose cases, so we’re not going to go to a grand jury and ask for a case that we know we’re going to lose,” Saenz said, in response to being asked whether his office had a strong case.

“Every spring break we unfortunately end up with about two to four sexual-assault cases. Half end the same way. The victims do not want to go back and go through a trial or relive what may have been a traumatic experience.”

The charges were dismissed after the alleged victim did “not feel she can face the pressure or stress of a trial,” according to court records.

Patricia has denied the accusations.

“As someone who was falsely accused of this very serious charge over 22 years ago, and never given the opportunity to defend myself and clear my name, I find it incredibly unfair, disappointing, and frustrating that this story would resurface now with the only purpose being to damage my character and reputation,” Patricia said in a statement. “I firmly maintain my innocence, as I have always done.”

Rams want to wear blue and yellow uniforms more often, but NFL says no #Rams https://t.co/3lLeNXpab9

— LA Rams Talk (@Rams_TT) May 12, 2018

Franklin-Myers Primed for Development Under Wade Phillips

Kristen Lago

http://www.therams.com/news-and-events/article-1/Franklin-Myers-Primed-for-Development-Under-Wade-Phillips-/ace85e62-506b-4e6e-8fc6-301c721967e0

When Stephen F. Austin’s John Franklin-Myers was drafted by the Rams, he knew he was coming onto a team with a stacked defensive line.

Not only will Franklin-Myers be joining a room that includes the reigning Defensive Player of the Year in Aaron Donald, but also other talented linemen like Ndamukong Suh and Michael Brockers.

“Obviously, they don’t need D-tackles right now,” Franklin admitted. “[But] I’m willing to go in there and do whatever it takes to win. Like I told [defensive line] coach Bill Johnson, I’ve played a little outside backer, dropped into coverage. I’ve played defensive end and I’ve played D-tackle.”

And with that combination of versatility and talent, Franklin-Myers is poised to develop nicely under one of the top coordinators in the league in the Rams’ Wade Phillips. His impressive production last season — recording 13.5 tackles for loss and 3.5 sacks — and standout measurables give Phillips two important aspects to look forward to.

“I like him because he’s 6-foot-4, 283 pounds and runs a 4.7 first,” Phillips said with a laugh. “But he’s a development guy, a develop-quickly guy it looked like to me.”

Phillips and the Rams staff got an up-close look at Franklin-Myers through the NFL Combine, where his overall performance and skill set impressed many. And with that in mind, Phillips was confident that the small school product would progress consistently throughout his first year in Los Angeles.

“We studied him a lot and he’s talented,” Phillips said. “We think we can help him in the short term, but he’s got a ways to go to be at a level where he needs to be with his talents. So we’re looking forward to working with him.”

In case anyone wonders why I did this, I actually need this thing myself. Draft bits are still coming in and a guide like this reduces the trouble finding the right thread.

Zooey wrote:

Um. I don’t know where Mo is, but it’s not on the Rams roster.

He signed with Seattle.

LMU93 sez:

Goff is already past being merely serviceable. He was far more than serviceable in 2017 and even if he never improved from there he’d be well above average. Goff doesn’t need to improve his numbers. He just has to maintain what he did last year consistently. Goff’s 2017 stats like QB rating, TD%, INT% all hold up as top 5 in the league over the past five seasons. He just has to keep doing that for several more years.

Right now he’s also not elite, and the climb from top half of the league to top 5 is pretty steep. And he doesn’t have to get there this year. The main reasons you can’t call Goff elite are (A) he simply hasn’t done it long enough and (B ) he needs some playoff success.

But I do think he’s set up to improve not only because he’s paired with McVay but because this offseason is about refining his mastery of the offense and evolving it further, not learning it, while continuing work on his mechanics. Big, big difference from a year ago.

McVay made big strides with Cousins in their 2nd season together (86.4 to 101.6 QB rating and a 19.7 point jump in ESPN QBR) and while that sort of jump is highly unlikely for Goff, there’s no reason to think he cannot and will not improve in his decision making. His biggest issue a year ago was holding onto the ball a second longer than he should have at times, which to me was a pure by-product of learning the new offense. Get the ball out consistently even a fraction of a second faster and his results could be better (and fumbles fewer).

Their O-line is also critical for him. Their performance was outstanding last year and continuing that will be important. They started investing in their future OL in this Draft and hopefully 2 of the 3 drafted become solid starters for them.

InvaderRam wrote:

i still gotta remind myself that the rams got peters, talib, and cook from this draft.

The defense has to avoid games like the 2nd half against Atlanta.

To me the offense just has to avoid extensive OL injuries.

I think Goff will be better, though it’s not clear how much better. Either way they can win with what he already was last year.

jimiramsboy wrote:

Last year I received an autographed football from Robert Woods and the Rams when someone told them about me and it included a really nice personalized note

Wow!

from Where Do Rams Fall in Second Wave of Post-Draft Power Rankings?

Kristen Lago

http://www.therams.com/news-and-events/article-1/Daily-Dose-Where-Do-Rams-Fall-in-Second-Wave-of-Post-Draft-Power-Rankings-/4854218b-e296-4c09-beb0-2328ea04e75b

USA Today: No. 5

Previous Ranking: No. 4

Change: -1

“Case to be made they won offseason after trades for Cooks, Talib, and Peters plus Suh signing. Yet ‘offseason champs’ rarely win Super Bowl.”

ESPN.com: No. 6

Previous Ranking: No. 6

Change: –

“The Rams didn’t make a pick until the third round, but they still walked away with 11 selections and a clear strategy. After bolstering the secondary with trades, they used seven of their picks on offensive and defensiv