Oakland Raiders head coach Tom Cable fired
Oakland Raiders coach Tom Cable is busy packing his boxes with three years worth of football and looking for a new job after the team decided not to bring the head coach back next season.
The team proclaimed their decision late Tuesday while Cable’s agent Don Yee alleges that other NFL teams have already shown significant interest in acquiring Cable for other jobs such as offensive line coach, in which he is already highly experienced.
"The Raiders express gratitude to Tom Cable for his contributions in his four seasons as an assistant and as head coach of the Silver and Black," the team said in a statement.
According to Cable’s contract, the team was supposed to decide by January 17 whether or not they wished to exercise the option to bring Cable back for 2011 and 2012. They chose not to wait and instead told him to pack his bags two days after another disappointing
season.
Although the Raiders were undefeated in their own division, the AFC West, they finished 8-8 overall. This was their first perfect record against their division since 1976. They did have a chance at the playoffs when they were enjoying a three-game winning
streak but did not manage to get better, losing four of their next six games.
Oakland is the first team since the establishment of the modern national football league in 1970 to win every single game in their division and still not get to the playoffs.
"We are disappointed because we are not going to the playoffs, but at the same time we stuck to the goal and stuck to the plan as we have done very week, and we got our eighth win," Cable said after the Raiders beat the Kansas City Chiefs 31-10 on Sunday.
"I'm very happy about that."
Reports said that Cable was upset when Hue Jackson was hired as offensive coordinator and that Jackson’s assistants were pushing him to find another job, which Jackson later denied.
"I don't know where all that stuff comes from," Jackson said. "We all here have a pretty good working relationship. I have known Tom here longer than probably anybody that's on this staff, other than Mike Waufle because I worked with those guys before. I
was a little surprised by it. There's no truth to it."
If the Raiders are planning to promote Jackson to head coach, they have some stiff competition. Early Tuesday afternoon, the team gave permission to the rival San Francisco 49ers to interview Jackson for their opening in the head coaching position.
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