Cable Gone Instead of Al!

I'm in shock!  Al has engineered 7 loosing seasons in a row, finally gets a guy who turns it around, and look what he does?  Al did it with Gruden as well, you may remember.  Who's the looser here?  I've got some pretty telling stats that the Raiders have performed poorly over a nearly 20 year period.  For example, the Raiders rank 24th out of 28 in wins among teams who have played every season from 1990 thru 2009 (144 wins for a 7.2 average wins per season).  In case you didn't notice - that's a long term loosing team.  Painful.

The point is that it is NOT the head coach that's the problem . . .


I thought Cable was growing into the job really well, and he obviously had most of the players and fans behind him.  WE all saw the quality he brought.  He was animated, excitable on the sideline, and certainly I thought he very much looked in charge during the game.  I was beginning to feel like he would be our next John Madden!  A REAL Raider coach.  I thought it appeared that he had found a way to coach the team, and work with Davis.

Apparently not.

Hugh Jackson was both a positive and a negative - responsible for giving the offensive game plans - some really great ones! BUT - why did he not run McFadden or Bush against Miami (9 times),  Indianapolis (14 times), key games where he didn't exploit weak running defenses?  Instead he put the ball and the game into Jason Campbell's hands.

Remember how Cable pulled Campbell early in the season, and then Jackson came out later and said HE was the guy that pulled Campbell . . . maybe Hugh was bucking for the job all along . . . maybe - dare I say it - he was undermining Cable?  I can see a couple of losses being setup by Jackson - maybe he even found a way to blame Cable based on something Cable said to him; "Hey Tom, I just did what you said to do!"  I can see Jackson telling Davis; "I want to be a head coach, and I would be willing to stay here if I'm made head coach.  Otherwise I'll definitely be gone because that's what I want to do."

I am VERY disappointed with this decision.

Yes, Jackson doubled the output of the offense.  But last year the Raiders had to rely on JaMarcus Russell!  Al's guy!  How hard was that even with a mediocre QB?  We got the answer - not very hard!

Did Al not see how the defense improved as well?  Again, the important losses against Miami and Indianapolis, (and Jacksonville for that matter) saw the defense having to stay out there, and they did not get the pressure on the quarterback throughout the game.  Maybe it was just man-on-man play and we weren't good enough, but I didn't see the kind of defensive attack against those guys like we did against KC.

Was that Cable's responsibility?

On most teams, probably so, but on the Raiders those guys really report to Al Davis.  He makes the decisions about the head and assistant coaches.  They know the head coach can't fire them.  So, they work together, but when push comes to shove, they don't HAVE to go with the head coach.

It's dysfunctional.  Where else does someone keep their job after such long term poor performance?

And to think I stood by Al's decisions through thick and thin for so many years . . .

I'll stop now.  I have to get over my disappointment with this decision.

---

Photo Credits:
All photos from the Raiders website