All Al Davis, All the Time
(Note: This piece appears currently at ESPN.com. A link to the site can be found below. — mark)
No need to feel pity or outrage for Tom Cable despite the terminally weird image of Cable walking around the Senior Bowl this week with no portfolio, not so much as a you-da-man for next season from the Raiders’ front office. After all, as of this writing, Cable is still getting paid by Al Davis despite:
(a) popping an assistant coach during a pre-season exchange;
(b) going 5-11 with a Raiders team that produced 17 offensive touchdowns in 16 games;
(c) having his ugly past domestic issues splayed about the local tabloids for grins and giggles;
and, far most egregiously,
(d) saying JaMarcus Russell stinks.
Well, Cable didn’t say that. He mostly only thought it last season, as Russell danced along to a 50.0 quarterback rating and 11 interceptions against three touchdown passes. But it was still widely seen as a firing offense in the Wonderful World of Al when Cable, in a rash burst of honesty, replied to a question by saying “you know that we would have” made the playoffs with even an average performance at the quarterback position.
That’s a direct shot at Russell, to whom Davis not only guaranteed a franchise-crippling amount of money as a No. 1 draft bust but, however incomprehensibly, remains committed despite what everybody saw out there in 2009.
Yet several weeks beyond Cable’s verbal hara-kiri, nothin’. Cable isn’t technically the head coach for next year yet, but he hasn’t been fired, either. Davis has added assistants – Mike Waufle on the defensive line, Hue Jackson to coordinate the offense – without much in the way of Cable-grams. (As Jackson noted, he spoke almost exclusively with Davis, not Cable, during his interview process.) Yet there is Cable, in Mobile, for some reason or other. And the thinking now is that Davis may well retain the man so long as Cable isn’t, you know … calling any plays or getting in the way of anything important.
Maybe Davis is happy with the job Cable did under the circumstances. Maybe Al, always a players-first owner, took note of the support Cable enjoys within the locker room. Perhaps the old man doesn’t want to pay Cable money for nothing, and can’t figure out how to enforce the “for cause” part of a firing procedure. Maybe Davis is simply playing the role of the contrarian, which rumor has it he invented back in the day.
This just in: It won’t get better. Not for the Raiders. Not for Cable. And certainly not for the dwindling Oakland fan base, which is bestowing new meaning upon the sporting term “hard-core.”
If you’re waiting for Al Davis to change his way of doing business, here’s hoping you packed a lunch. While Davis in his dotage has struck some observers as enigmatic, the larger truth is that he’s a fairly linear football guy. No matter what the realities of the era that surrounds him, Al likes certain things to almost the precise extent he always did.
Davis favors, for example, the downfield pass and the quarterback who can throw it, which explains why a guy like Russell could parlay a nice Sugar Bowl performance and some really cool pre-draft tosses from his knees into a $61 million payday ($32 million guaranteed, for those crying at home). Davis favors is the “athletic” receiver as opposed to the truly professional one, which explains Darius Heyward-Bay, another draft-day Titanic.
And, very notably, Davis favors the order of command. That’s the one with Al up top and everybody – and I do mean everybody – well below the observation deck.
A friend recently committed unintentional humor when he asked if there were a way for the Raiders to “humanely” move Davis out of his role as the club’s top executive, as if Al were a stray pet in need of a new start. In a word: nope. There is no informed reading of the situation that would lead anyone to conclude Davis is prepared to surrender control of his franchise. If seven straight seasons with 11 or more defeats hasn’t done it, nothing will.
All of which brings us back to Tom Cable, the man who might have thought he turned a corner with Davis during the Sahara march of 2009 when he finally persuaded the owner to allow him to bench JaMarcus Russell. The move was nearly outright applauded in the Raiders’ locker room, where teammates had long since concluded Russell wasn’t ever going to be the guy. Russell’s replacement, Bruce Gradkowski, was hailed as a conquering hero for coming to work prepared. It was a giddy minute or two.
Comes now the winter, and Al Davis’s primary move has been to hire a man, Hue Jackson, who – after his many conversations with Davis – speaks enthusiastically of getting Russell “playing the way we all wish that he can perform.” In other words, it’s back to Square One, with JaMarcus at the helm – just as Al Davis would have it, which is the same thing as saying it will be done.
Memo to Cable, for 2010 and beyond: When you cash the checks, it means you forfeit the right to act surprised.
ESPN.com story link: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?page=kreidler/100128
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