Old Failures Spoil Dawn of a New Era

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. —  Meet the Rams’ new Chuck Knox era, not the same as the old Chuck Knox era.

In Era I, 1973 through 1977, no Ram team lost a regular-season game by more than 16 points.

In Era II, which dawned Sunday afternoon, the Rams lost by 33 points.

In Era I, no Ram team ever yielded more than 31 points in a regular-season game.

In Era II, the Rams yielded 40 in their opener.

In Era I, the worst loss Knox had to endure was by 37-7 to Dallas in the 1975 NFC championship game.

In Era II, with the NFC championship game light years away, Knox lost to the Buffalo Bills, 40-7.

James Lofton wasn’t the only one breaking records at Rich Stadium this day.

While Lofton caught enough passes from Jim Kelly and Frank Reich to break Steve Largent’s record for all-time pass-receiving yardage, Knox watched the Rams take their 11th consecutive loss.

Knox has revived broken-down franchises--the Rams of the early 1970s, the Bills of the late 1970s, the Seahawks of the early 1980s. But this bunch of underaged and underskilled Rams are another matter.

Knox’s task isn’t going to get done in a week, a month, a year.

Maybe not in two years.

Maybe not in three.

These Rams have a quarterback who, despite eight months of soul-searching and head-cleaning, despite the off-season addition of quarterback coach/security blanket Ted Tollner, looked every bit as jittery and uncertain as he did last season, when he escorted John Robinson to the broadcast booth. After a personal-worst 20 interceptions last season, Jim Everett threw four more Sunday, matching another personal worst.

These Rams couldn’t keep Thurman Thomas out of the end zone or defensive end Bruce Smith out of the Ram backfield. Smith had two sacks and two pass deflections, prompting Everett to suggest that “maybe we should have made Bruce Smith the quarterback and given him the ball, he was in the backfield so much.”

And Knox’s new one-back offense?

It got 66 rushing yards and fewer than four first downs per quarter.

Sequestered in an empty gray cement dressing room that had the look and feel of a prison cell, Knox was asked for an assessment. What could he say?

“We got beat by a good football team,” he said.

“We didn’t help ourselves,” he said.

“We couldn’t stop them defensively, we couldn’t get anything going offensively and the special teams were so-so. That’s the story of the ballgame,” he said.

“We’ll get better,” he promised.

When and where is anybody’s guess. If it doesn’t happen next week against New England, the Rams will have matched the franchise record for most consecutive defeats. After that, three of the next four games are on the road--at Miami, at San Francisco and at New Orleans.

For Knox and the Rams, it could get a lot worse before it gets any better.

Jackie Slater is the only Ram old enough to span both Knox regimes. Being able to remember the good times allows him the perspective to cope with the bad.

“Chuck’s a winner,” Slater said. “From his perspective, he has to be hurting. We’re all hurting. It’s tough to look next to me on the sideline and see all these people ticked off because things are going wrong . . .

“But there’s not a doubt in my mind that he has us on the right track. There wasn’t a thing out there that Buffalo did that surprised us. No surprises. We came thoroughly prepared, and that’s how I grade a coaching staff.

“Chuck puts a team in position to be productive. It’s up to the players to make the plays.”

Running back Robert Delpino is new to Knox, but not to the Rams’ predicament.

“I feel he’s come in and been asked to coach a team that’s been on the bubble for two years,” Delpino said of Knox. “It doesn’t matter who’s the coach, you have to respect any coach who tries to turn it around the way Chuck Knox is doing.”