Knox Pulls the Plug on Frustration

Jim Everett held the ice bag to his right knee when the intended receiver should have been his head.

What’s the color of an Excedrin headache?

Sunday, Everett would have voted for the color purple.

Carlos Jenkins to the left of him. Chris Doleman to the right of him. And up the middle came a blitzing Jack Del Rio, who sacked Everett once and hounded him so relentlessly that midway through the third quarter, Everett hauled off and tried to wedge a football in Del Rio’s facemask.

Incomplete pass.

Unsportsmanlike penalty on the quarterback.

Minnesota’s Purple People Beaters had Everett so dazed and confused--and, not coincidentally, so far behind on the scoreboard--that Ram Coach Chuck Knox rode to the emotional rescue and pulled Everett from the game with 1:31 left in the third quarter.

“He knew I was frustrated,” Everett said. “I think that was pretty obvious.”

“The way the game was going,” Knox said, “I thought it was a good time to put Pagel in there and see if he could give us a little spark. And he did.”

A spark, yes. But when Mike Pagel entered the game, the Rams trailed by 21 points, 31-10, and needed nothing less than full-scale conflagration.

Pagel burned the Vikings once, on his first series of the afternoon, which also happened to be his first series since the season opener. “Just a few weeks ago,” Pagel deadpanned. Pagel drove the Rams 75 yards in nine plays, hitting Jim Price for a 16-yard touchdown pass on the last one.

Rust never sleeps, however, and the longer Pagel played, the more it consumed him--with Pagel spending most of the fourth quarter looking every bit the part of an NFL quarterback who hadn’t taken a Sunday snap in three months. Pagel’s second possession: Fourth-and-goal pass forced into double coverage, intended for Jeff Chadwick in the back of the end zone, when Price was open underneath.

“I made a poor decision,” Pagel said.

Pagel’s third possession: Interception by Viking safety Vencie Glenn at the Minnesota five-yard line when Henry Ellard was open in the end zone.

“I made a poor throw,” Pagel said.

Pagel’s fourth possession: First-down pass intercepted by Viking cornerback Anthony Parker at the Ram 40-yard line when no one in the vicinity was open.

What more could Pagel say?

The Rams lost to Minnesota, 31-17, and the way they lost had Knox declaring it the team’s poorest performance since a 40-7 defeat at Buffalo, which is going some. But Pagel serves as kind of a human gauge for these sort of things and he also played against Buffalo, his first and only appearance before Sunday.

So Pagel has become Red Auerbach’s cigar in the reverse.

When Pagel plays, the Rams are going down and they are going down big, guar-an-teed.

Since the Rams failed to play much football against the Vikings, baseball analogies carried the day in the losing locker room.

“They brought in a new pitcher,” Everett said, and didn’t seem too displeased about it. “Chuck was looking for a changeup.”

“This job is like being a relief pitcher,” Pagel said. “It’s very similar to that, except a relief pitcher gets in a lot more often than a backup quarterback. Realistically, you go into every game thinking you’re not going to play.”

In some shape or form, disaster must strike first. Either a disabling injury or a crippling deficit.

It places Pagel in a most awkward predicament, since he knows that what’s best for his quarterback rating is what’s worst for his team.

“It’s the old saying--’You’re only one play away,’ ” Pagel said. “But, really, quarterbacks this time of year don’t go down. Early, maybe, but this time of year, it’s not likely.”

This time of year, most starting quarterbacks are bidding for playoff paychecks. Not in Anaheim, though, so when Everett begins firing incompletions and jawing nose-to-nose with 250-pound middle linebackers, Knox throws up his hands and waves in the junior varsity.

And that was pretty much the scout team out there in the fourth quarter--Pagel calling signals and handing off to Anthony Thompson, who then followed the blocks of David Lang.

“I hate to see something like this happen,” said Knox, who turned the game’s final 16 1/2 minutes into garbage time. Knox cleared every inch of his bench, including the lost-and-forgotten Thompson, who began the day with one carry for two yards and ended it as the Rams’ leading rusher for one afternoon--eight carries, 51 yards.

Pagel made a similar statistical leap. Pregame, he was one of three for 10 yards in 1992. Into the breach, he was seven of 17 for 89 yards and a touchdown.

It was merely a matter of time.

Suddenly handed 16 1/2 minutes of it, Pagel admitted to being momentarily stunned.

“I was surprised at the timing,” he said. “I was warming Jim up, like I always do, in between series. He was so close to going back in there when Chuck points at me and says, ‘You’re in.’ Just like that.”

Pagel laughed and shook his head.

“It never fails,” he said. “Whenever you’re least expecting it, ‘You’re in there.’ It’s uncanny how that works.”

Now, Pagel knows better.

He plays for a team capable of falling back by three touchdowns within a matter of minutes.

And when that happens, he plays for a coach prone to rash decision-making.

Chuck Knox, conservative?

Which Chuck Knox are you talking about?

Not this one. Not Captain Hook.