"Went to Buffalo- anything to get away from the late Carroll Rosenbloom. Knox produced five divisional titles in five years in Los Angeles but never made the Super Bowl, which turned off Rosenbloom.
A deal was arranged where Knox would get a promotion in Buffalo- football coach AND vice-president in charge of football operations. In other words, he runs the whole show. He didn't do too badly in his first year, winning five games, or exactly the amount Buffalo had won over the previous two seasons.
The 47-year-old Knox didn't do too badly at the draft table, either, getting running back Terry Miller and defensive tackle Dee Hardison, now starters. With a slew of picks from the 49ers for O.J. Simpson, he should fatten the Bills' roster with talent.
Knox is a great organizer and teacher, a no-nonsense type whose only rap has been conservativeness."
-Dave Newhouse, The Complete Handbook of Pro Football, 1979 Edition
HOW CHUCK KNOX IS REBUILDING THE BILLS
The Former Ram Coach Is Piecing Together Buffalo's Future Through The Draft And His Young Players' Improvement
"Maybe it was a question of standards.
Chuck Knox had won five divisional championships in five seasons as head coach of the Rams, but in his final years in southern California he was criticized for the dull offense played by his team and for not getting the Rams into the Super Bowl.
So he moved to Buffalo, where no division pennant had flown for 13 years; where not only was there dull offense, but few victories.
Knox did not promise the Buffalo people a rose garden. They, in turn, did not consider him the football messiah, not yet.
What he has brought them is order where chaos took place. More than that, he has entertained him.
For the first half of the 1979 season, the Bills were one of the highest scoring teams in the NFL. They scored 51 points against Cincinnati and 46 against the Jets. It was not a sudden phenomenon. The Bills scored 302 points last year. Only 18 of the 28 NFL teams scored more than 300 points. More significantly, the Los Angeles Rams scored only 14 more points than Knox's young team.
But Knox's first priority when he took the Buffalo job in January of 1978 was not strategy or scoring points. It was to trade O.J. Simpson.
Simpson and the Bills were like a marriage gone stale. O.J. wanted to go elsewhere, preferably to the West Coast. He was, however, a prisoner of economics. If you can't go where you want to go, you just don't quietly fade away. At least you don't if you are making $733,000, guaranteed.
So O.J. would have stayed if the deal had not been made. And if he had stayed, the atmosphere would have been polluted. Knox would have been merely the fifth head coach in O.J.'s career.
Knox found his opening. Joe Thomas, the San Francisco general manager, and Ed DiBartolo, the team's owner, both were under fire from the fans and the press. They saw in O.J. a potential gate attraction and fan distraction.
So the Juice went back to his hometown.
'I don't want any of your players,' Knox told Thomas. 'I want some of your draft choices. I want to build my own team in Buffalo.' The Bills have not yet turned the draft choices to maximum advantage.
Three of the players taken with those draft choices, defensive end Scott Hutchinson, wide receiver Danny Fulton and defensive end Ken Johnson, haven't cracked the starting lineup. Johnson, in fact, isn't even on the Bills roster.
The biggest one got away. The 49ers finished dead last in the NFL last season, so the first-round they owed to Buffalo turned out to be the first in the entire college draft.
Buffalo used it to pick Ohio State's Tom Cousineau, the inside linebacker the Bills needed so badly. Then they failed to sign him, losing him to the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League.
There are some sound explanations for that loss- a conflict of interest by Cousineau's agent, Jimmy Walsh; Cousineau's willingness to get all his information about Buffalo's offer from Walsh, instead of participating face-to-face himself.
But Knox is characteristically pragmatic about it. 'All I know,' he says, 'is that we don't have him.'
Knox's next priority was to reorganize Buffalo's scouting department, which had been firing blanks for years. For instance, the Bills drafted five linebackers within the first four rounds in the previous three seasons. None of them were with the team when Knox took the job.
Hired to run that department was Norm Pollom, the easy-going ex-school administrator who was with Knox in Los Angeles. Pollom's first draft produced three members of Football Digest's all-rookie team last season- running back Terry Miller, defensive tackle Dee Hardison and linebacker Lucious Sanford.
There are three more candidates from the 1979 draft- wide receiver Jerry Butler, linebacker Jim Haslett and nose tackle Fred Smerlas.
Realizing that stability was an important factor missing from the franchise, Knox assembled a coaching staff consisting mostly of coaches who had been on his staff in Los Angeles. Continuity was assured for his teaching system.
On another level, three disenchanted veterans- guard Reggie McKenzie, defensive tackle Mike Kadish and tight end Reuben Gant- were re-signed after they had played out their options.
Then Knox traded with the Rams for another unhappy player, linebacker Isiah Robertson, to fill a need on his defense. Still another disenchanted veteran, defensive end Sherman White, who held out for the entire training camp and was welcomed back just before the opening day this year, got a long Dutch uncle talk from Knox and played his best football since joining the Bills in 1976.
On a more subtle level, Knox went to work on the psyche of quarterback Joe Ferguson. Ferguson had played under four head coaches since 1973 before Knox came to Buffalo. Always the possessor of a strong arm, Fergy had the reputation as a head-hanger, a player who would blame himself when things went wrong, a quarterback who had to be led rather than one who would lead himself.
'Under coach Knox I think Joe found a system with which he is comfortable,' says Bob Chandler, the veteran wide receiver.
'This year you can see Joe's maturity,' says Bill Munson, Fergy's veteran backup. 'He's changed.'
The change didn't exactly make Buffalo a playoff team, but for the first half of the season Ferguson led the NFL in passing. He won over his team again, and it should have a profound effect on the Bills in the future.
The future may not be now in Buffalo, but it may not be too far off.
'Another draft or two; some experience for our younger players,' says Knox."
-Larry Felser, Football Digest, January 1980
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