Knox Proves a Firm Believer in Safety First

It is the rarest of scoring plays in football, and yet it is rewarded with the fewest points.

Chuck Knox has noticed the paradox. Safeties don’t come easily. An NFL team gets one a year, maybe. The NFL career record for them is four, shared by Ted Hendricks and Doug English. Once, Knox had a defensive end named Fred Dryer who had two of them in a single game for the Rams.

It might have been the greatest game of Knox’s life.

At least until the Rams win one, 2-0.

That would be perfection, according to the gospel according to Chuck. Rams by a safety. It has never happened, and probably never will, but Knox figures it’s something to strive for.

A safety, Knox will tell you, is a wondrous thing.

A safety means you tackle your opponent behind his own goal line, or block an opponent’s punt out of his own end zone, thereby humiliating your opponent.

A safety means you score points without requiring an offense.

A safety means you score points . . . and then get the football right back.

What a concept.

Kevin Greene got a safety for Knox on Sunday, a play that violently swung the afternoon’s momentum into the Rams’ favor. The New York Jets were leading, 10-3, when Greene found quarterback Browning Nagle dawdling in his own end zone and dragged him down.

The play cut the Rams’ deficit in half, but that was only on the scoreboard. When the go-nowhere Ram offense saw what Greene had wrought, it was shamed into scoring some points of its own in the second half.

The Rams eventually won, 18-10.

Afterward, Knox was asked about the point value of the common, not-so-common safety.

“Safeties?” Knox responded. “Should they be worth more than two points?”

He thought about it a while. As he did, his eyebrows danced an Irish jig. His head bobbed up and down and he flashed a smile that blinded the TV cameramen in the room.

“Yes,” Knox finally answered. “Oh, yes.”

Greene’s most certainly was. As rookie defensive tackle Sean Gilbert put it, “That was the turning point. You could see it in everybody’s eyes. We needed just a little bit of something to get that flame, that fire lit. And Kevin did it.”

It was less than a sure thing, initially, because Nagle fumbled the ball upon impact with Greene and Jets running back Freeman McNeil recovered. Several confusing moments followed, with McNeil, a free man in his own end zone, sprinting left and then right and then all the way out to the New York 12-yard line.

The officials huddled to make the call. On the Rams’ sideline, they may or may not have noticed Knox, who was jumping up and clapping his hands together high over his head.

“I was over there, trying to help, giving them the safety signal,” Knox said. “I didn’t think we’d get that. But it was a fourth-down fumble and the only one who can advance a fumble on fourth down is the ballcarrier. And the ballcarrier there was the quarterback.

“They got it sorted out.”

Greene’s safety was the third of his career, breaking Dryer’s Ram record, and placing him within one of Hendricks and English.

Greene was unaware of this, safeties being, well, safeties.

“It’s not really something I’m fighting for,” Greene said. Then he laughed. “I mean, I don’t look in the mirror before a game and say, ‘This is a record I’m going for.’ It’s not in the back of my mind.”

A safety is usually all luck, Greene claims. On this one, he said, “I just fell into it. (Defensive tackle) Marc Boutte had the sack. He had the quarterback wrapped up, and then the quarterback rolled out on him. I just chased him down.”

Greene gestured to a reporter.

“You could’ve done it,” he said with a grin. “Trust me.”

And don’t get Greene going about what a safety is worth.

“I don’t think about those things. I’m just doing my job. I’ve never thought about how much it’s supposed to be worth.

“I got a sack. I know what that’s worth.”

Knox, meanwhile, was waxing on and on about safeties--which, for Mr. Let’s Keep This Brief, OK?, meant spending 15 seconds on the subject.

“I was involved in a playoff game as an assistant coach with the Detroit Lions,” Knox said, “and we lost to the Dallas Cowboys, 5-0. Then, a few years later, I was coaching Buffalo and I was on the other end of it. We beat Cincinnati, 5-0. So I know about safeties.”

You can win games with them, or at the very least, alter the course of those games.

“A safety picks a defense up,” Knox said. “And today, when the Jets came down there at the end of the game, they were down by eight points. That changed the way they had to play. They needed more than a touchdown. Those extra points made a difference.”

Before Greene collided with Nagle, the Rams were in danger of losing to a winless team in their own home, in danger of falling to 1-3, in danger of taking a two-game losing streak into an October gantlet of games at San Francisco, at New Orleans and against the New York Giants.

Then came the sack and the two points and the subsequent offensive jump start.

The Rams had been transported to safety.