ANALYSIS : True to Form, Knox Opts for Long Haul

“My first year was going to be a long one . . . . With the team coming off a three-win season, I knew it would take a minor-miracle just to double that. So I decided to play it cool.

“You know what happens when you run before you can walk, right? You might have a couple of nice bursts, but in the end, you fall on your face.

“I flat-out told my coaches we did not want to win before our personnel were capable of sustaining winning. We did not want to trade top draft choices for veterans who would only be able to play for us one year. We would not look for short-term solutions to long-term problems. Once we were on the edge of winning, we could always get veterans to push us over the top.

“But before that . . .’

--Chuck Knox, in his 1988 autobiography, “Hard Knox�

No, Knox is not prescient, at least not that we know--although you survive for two decades as an NFL head coach and you probably have developed powers beyond the reach of most.

Those were the words of the repeat rebuilder talking about his first year with the Buffalo Bills, when Knox was 14 years younger, but bad football still was bad football.

Knox had just won five NFC West Division titles with the Rams when he took over the Bills, and what he found was a team in shambles.

Which brings us to the 1992 Rams, a team Knox himself compares directly to that 3-11 team he inherited in Buffalo.

The plan remains the same, and all you have to do is know what he believed and said and thought then, and you know what he believes and says and thinks now. That’s the beauty of dealing with a man so predictable and consistent and enduring as Chuck Knox.

The plan never was to win this year. Beyond the impossibility of it, pulling out a respectable year just isn’t worth it in the long haul of Knox’s calculations.

When it comes to teams as far behind the curve as the 1992 Rams or 1978 Bills, teams four or five or seven star players away from the big time, is it really better to try to steal a few games and go for an 8-8 minor miracle or let the chips fall and accept your 5-11/6-10 fate and top-five draft choice?

Which do you want for the long run: Herschel Walker or a good shot to draft a Marshall Faulk or Jerome Bettis or whoever else is the hottest thing going in the college ranks?

Obviously, Knox has made his choice, and it isn’t for high-priced, high-reputation, high-maintenance veterans and attempting to squeeze out a few extra victories to give the lifetime win-loss record less of a beating.

Knox’s Bills went 5-11 his first year, 7-9 his second, then won the AFC East in his third, and he hints that he probably had more talent there than he does here now.

Anybody who expected an instant turnaround with the Rams, courtesy of the man who pulled it off with the Rams the first time around and with Seattle, can stop expecting it.

Look at this team. Watch Thurman Thomas coast through the defense or Bryan Cox humble the offense or just about every play of every game. It’s basically not possible, barring the return of Knute Rockne for these Rams to seize a playoff spot.

Later is everything. Draft picks are everything. Thirty-year-old free-agent vets are almost irrelevant.

This is what Knox said Wednesday when he was asked if the team was interested in Keith Millard:

“It’s a question, which direction do we want to go?� Knox said. “We’re sitting here, obviously we’re in a major rebuilding program. We’re starting two rookie defensive tackles in Marc Boutte and Sean Gilbert, we’ve added a third defensive tackle (Eric Hayes) who’s in his third year.

“And the question is, do you want to bring somebody in that could take playing time away from them?

“Right now, we’re saying that we want to build, let the young players play and profit by what’s happening to them, go in there and get the experience that down the road will bear fruition for them.�

Sound like something you read at the top of this story? Sound like somebody who wants to sneak into a third-place NFC West finish just for kicks?

One of the worst things this team could do is horde a bunch of 30-something vets, wiggle to an illusory seven- or eight-win season and end up drafting in the middle of the first round.

You play Boutte and Gilbert together and expect some rookie errors. You grab any talented young veteran you can off the waiver wire. You stay patient.

In the off-season, the Rams had a chance at Walker, who now wouldn’t look too bad lining up in an “I-formation� (or is it “Me-formation�?) behind Jim Everett. But Knox thought the only reason to go after Walker would be if he were the ticket to the Super Bowl.

The Eagles thought that, signed Walker, and he might get them to the Super Bowl.

The Rams have had two chances at Millard, a guy who three years ago was the game’s best inside defensive lineman and who a year ago would’ve been the best Ram defensive lineman even with his torn-up knee.

But Knox thought there was no way Millard would still be playing when the Rams were gearing up for their playoff run two or three years down the road.

The Rams’ future began with this year’s draft, where their 3-13 record of a year ago enabled them to draft 315-pound Gilbert, who may or may not be the second-coming of Millard, eight years younger and one knee better.

Every week, Knox lets us all in on the plan. Every week, when he’s asked about an upcoming opponent, which invariably has had more recent success than the Rams, Knox praises the team, then adds that the Bills or the Dolphins or the fill-in-the-blanks are much further down the road to rebuilding than his team.

With this team, after cleaning out the scouting department, redoing the team’s video system, redoing the locker room and the thousand other things Knox did this off-season to restart the engines, the regular season is almost anti-climactic.

He’s just starting.

“I knew coming in it would be tough,� Knox said this week. “You take a hard look at what has happened for the last two years, a realistic look, and you know that some things are going to have to be changed.

“We’re making progress. We actually played better in the last two weeks than we did the first week. And even though we made some mistakes Sunday, we played better.

“We just have to come back this week and regroup and take another step. We just have to stay the course.�

“What I found in Buffalo was nothing. There was no morale. No direction. . . . Their scouting department was run out of a shoe box. . . . (The owner) Ralph Wilson was a nonmeddler all right. He had ignored this team right to the edge of chaos. Correct that. They had long since passed chaos.

“Not only did we not have any players, we had no players coming . . .

“OK, maybe this job did fall out of the sky. But it felt like Dorothy’s house in ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ It landed right on top of me.�

--Knox, from “Hard Knox�