Al Davis expands his control of Raiders

by Ray Ratto

The new target date for the announcement of Tom Cable as the Raiders' latest assistant coach is . . . wait for it . . . Wednesday.

Oh, they'll call him the head coach, and they'll go on and on about how his inspirational leadership at the end of last year turned a 3-11 team into a 5-11 team. He'll sit in his seat with an uncomfortable smile and an unconvincing story about the opportunity that has been re-gifted to him, but he gets it. He was confirmed publicly only after Al Davis hired his entire staff for him except for the defensive coordinator, which is almost surely going to John Marshall even though there has not yet been an announcement, and that of the offensive line coach, which will naturally fall to Cable.

In other words, that's Wednesday's show - Al and his trusty overhead projector showing us why the old system of leaving the power to hire in the hands of the head coach has been part of the reason the Raiders have seized the NFL's low ground, and why he is just the man to shake up the system to his benefit.

And were we Tom Cable, our first call of the day would be to Todd Haley in Hawaii, to see if he could use a really good offensive line coach in Kansas City. Other than the money, it would be a better job with greater respect than the one he has now.

But that's not likely to happen, so what we have is the show.

Oh, Al will mention the failed head coaches - he may go all the way back to Mike White, but we suspect he might limit the scope to the post-Gruden Era. That would take in Bill Callahan, Norval Turner, Art Shell and Lane Kiffin, and take in a number of assistants that range from Tom Walsh to Brian Schneider - all gentlemen now gone from the Slack-Jaw and Shield to spoil other teams.

Thus, the Raiders' talking point here is that the head coaches don't have Al's gift for finding nascent position coaching genius, and so he is going to take over more of that area, to match his level of input on the roster, the draft and the game-planning.

In other words, the new Raider master plan is that Al has put his mighty knowledge and football background to work and found something more encompassing than absolute power. And he has also managed to take the worst job in football and make it measurably worse.

Let's re-word that, so it sinks in.

Al has reinvented and expanded the idea of total control. And he has undercut the concept of head coach so that it is now total, total control.

Al promised at the Lane Kiffin-Isn't-Getting-Paid press conference to find a football guy - a de facto general manager, perhaps, or just a more contemporary/out-of-the-box thinker. That job is now filled - it's Al, and his out-of-the-box thought is that the staff is more important than its leader. And the guy who fills the staff is more important than the staff.

And here are some of the by-products of that decision. Paul Hackett could go from scout to quarterback coach to offensive coordinator in two weeks, unless it's Ted Tollner, who just completed an interview with Al for an as-yet-undefined job. Al finds a defensive coordinator, which almost surely will be John Marshall, and sends him to Cable for approval or approval, and then they look at carpet swatches for the office. The rest of the staff works for Al, not Cable.

And the players, who are neither stupid nor feckless, realize that they outrank Cable, too, because Al isn't giving up the prerogative of being their enabler, either.

In a truly brilliant moment in a largely brilliant career, Al has run a table we all thought he had already run. If he gets a hankering for the smell of fresh laundry and damp shoulder pad liners, equipment manager Bob Romanski is doomed.

Al has seen the obstacle that has thwarted his will, and it is the head coach. The head coach always lets him down because the head coach thinks he is . . . well, the head coach. Even though it is the Raiders' head coach, they all think their brilliance and command are so overwhelming that even Al cannot help but see the wisdom in giving a free hand.

They are always wrong, which is why they leave so soon, and why we always misunderstand the Raiders. Al never trusts that anyone can articulate his vision as well as he can, and since his experience, even with Jon Gruden, is that head coaches try to mold his message to their needs, so he has decided to neutralize the position.

At least it seems that way to the outside world, because we see the amount of power Al already wields and, given the results, wonder why a little less Al wouldn't be a stride forward toward .500, if not an actual playoff berth. Al, on the other hand, sees the problem as insufficient amounts of Al, and too many independent interpretations between Al and the product.

So that's the show. Al has changed the structure of command so that the head coach is at the bottom of the pyramid rather than the top of it. Tom Cable awoke today to see that he has more influence on the product as line coach, and other than the salary, there is no real reason for him to have the other title at all.

Now is that far enough out of the box for you, or what?

Almost as much, as it turns out, as the notion that a head coach in the NFL could call someone who isn't a head coach yet about a job as an assistant. Hey, out of the box is for everybody.