Snohomish grad Cable takes over Raiders
Published 11:40 pm Tuesday, September 30, 2008
ALAMEDA, Calif. — Al Davis and the Raiders fired Lane Kiffin and promoted Tom Cable to head coach on Tuesday.
Offensive line coach Tom Cable, who is a 1982 graduate of Snohomish High School, will take over on an interim basis. The team has a bye this week before Cable coaches his first game at New Orleans on Oct. 12.
Cable is regarded as one of the top offensive line coaches in the game, and worked with successful units in Atlanta and Oakland. He spent four years as a college head coach at Idaho, and was also an assistant at UCLA, California and Colorado.
“This is in many ways a strange day,” Cable said. “I have a friend who lost a job. That’s difficult in this business but, as we know, this is a business. It is time for us to move forward and to put the past behind us. … We have a good coaching staff here and a good football team here.”
Cable was a three-sport athlete at Snohomish, but had his greatest success in football under legendary coach Dick Armstrong. After graduating from Snohomish, Cable was a four-year letterman at Idaho and a three-year starter at offensive guard. He played under Dennis Erickson at Idaho.
“Football’s a game for tough people,” Cable said in a Herald article in 2001. “It’s not for people who don’t like to work. It’s not for people who don’t care or are not committed. That’s what you get when you come out of Snohomish High School. You have to be tough, or you’re not going to play.”
The 79-year-old Davis held a press conference for more than 90 minutes, sharing the stage with Cable for some of that time and then sticking around afterward to take more questions. The once omnipresent owner rarely talks to the media anymore, last holding a news conference on Aug. 1, 2007, shortly after Bill Walsh died.
Oakland has lost at least 11 games for five straight seasons, tying the dismal Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the 1980s for the worst stretch in NFL history.
Since returning to Oakland in 1995, the Raiders have had just three winning seasons and will be on their eighth head coach. The one constant during that period has been Davis, who won three Super Bowl titles in his first 21 years with the Raiders but has had little success over the past quarter-century.
Kiffin had a 5-15 record since being hired last year, losing his final game 28-18 on Sunday to San Diego.
