Silver and Black Report

After being the interim coach for 12 games, posting a 4-8 record and ending the 2008 season with back-to-back wins, it appears that Tom Cable has convinced the Oakland Raiders’ brass that he is the right man for the job.

According to sources close to the organization, Cable will be named the next head football coach of the Silver & Black.

Cable, 43, served as offensive line coach in his first season with the Raiders and turned around a lowly group that allowed a league high 72-sacks in 2006. That season, Oakland finished sixth in the NFL in rushing. He also helped Robert Gallery turn his career around from a bust tackle to a solid starting guard.

When Oakland parted ways with Lane Kiffin four games into the 2008 campaign – after a tumultuous feud between coach and owner – Cable was pegged for the job in the midst of the team’s worst stretch in modern day history.

“This is in many ways a strange day,” Cable said in September. “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.”

Even though the Raiders posted another losing record – becoming the first team ever to lose at least 11 games in six straight seasons – highly regarded players declared their loyalty to Cable when the season ended and let their feelings be known about who should lead the team going into 2009.

“If (Davis) wants to ask or if he’s interested in our opinion, I’m sure any man in this locker room would vouch for (Cable),” commented running back Justin Fargas. “From just the way he’s treated us with respect and raised our expectations.”

The player who the organization needs the most to develop into a great talent even pledge his allegiance to Cable.

“[Cable] brought us from one direction and took us up the ladder,” quarterback JaMarcus Russell said. “He always told us that deep down he thought we were a good football team. By him becoming (head) coach, he guided us in a different way. He talked to us about what needed to be done, we need to make some changes and within that, I think we did.”

The news weeks after reports stated that New York Giants offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride spoke to owner Al Davis on the phone regarding the position on January 3^rd, and officially interviewing for the job January in Oakland.

Green Bay Packer assistant head coach and former Raider linebacker Winston Moss was also a candidate for the opening.

Oakland will have to rebuild the staff around Cable, as their defensive coordinator since 2004, Rob Ryan, bolted to Cleveland to reunite with Eric Mangini at the same capacity for the Browns.

Greg Knapp, who was offensive coordinator and called plays for the Raiders before Cable took over that duty as the season wound down, also departed and landed with the Seahawks on Jim Mora’s staff.

“I want to be the head coach of the Raiders, but it’s not in my hands. But I certainly know I put this team together and got it going in the right direction, and today proved that,” replied Cable after the season ending victory in Tampa Bay when asked about his future with the club.

SBReport has also learned that Cable will have full autonomy in hiring his own coaches and surrounding himself with staffers of his choosing. 

Contact Author: Victor Cotto – SB Report Columnist

Greg Knapp

By Eric Strauss, S&B Report Staff Columnist

Although it remains to be seen whether interim head coach Tom Cable will be back with the Oakland Raiders next year, and in what capacity, there will definitely be changes in the Lane Kiffin-built coaching staff.

Multiple media reports indicate offensive coordinator Greg Knapp, as had been rumored for some time, will be joining new Seattle Seahawks head coach Jim Mora Jr.

Knapp, at one time a possible head coaching candidate in Oakland, finally was given play-calling abilities after Kiffin’s dismissal a quarter of the way through the season, only to see them taken away by the halfway mark of the year after a string of low-scoring performances.

Meanwhile, defensive coordinator Rob Ryan, one of the longest-tenured members of the coaching staff, is reported to be a target of new Cleveland Browns head coach Eric Mangini, who worked with Ryan in New England. Ryan has been with the Raiders for five years, serving under four different head coaches, and like Knapp was once considered a head coaching possibility.

The San Francisco 49ers’ website says Raiders running backs coach Tom Rathman has agreed to join that Bay Area club, with whom he spent most of his playing career.

And special teams coach Brian Schneider, whose charges had a terrific season in 2008, is reportedly interviewing around the league.

Most sources agree wide receivers coach James Lofton is the only member of the staff, including Cable, with a contract for 2009, and the other assistants’ pacts are up next week. Several reports indicate the team is willing to let assistants get an early start on departures, and with no clear indication of who the head coach will be, it appears many are trying to find stability somewhere other than Oakland.

The exodus began, in fact, before the season even ended, with offensive line assistant James Cregg notoriously drawing Cable’s ire by resigning to join Kiffin’s University of Tennessee staff.

The Raiders have not formally interviewed anyone for the head coaching spot yet (the Rooney rule must be satisfied, among other formalities), although owner Al Davis reportedly has spoken at some length with both Cable and New York Giants offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride, a former San Diego Chargers head coach.

If there are mass departures from the staff, even if Cable wins the permanent job as head coach, it could hamper some of the progress made by quarterback JaMarcus Russell and the team as a whole in a pair of season-ending victories.

On the other hand, with the Raiders’ recent struggles, it can be debated whether retaining a coach such as the ultra-popular defensive coordinator Ryan is a key to consistency, or merely a key to the consistent inconsistency of the past six years.

Other assistants who finished the 2008 season on the Silver & Black sidelines include: Quarterbacks coach John DiFilippo (who in a “Six Degrees of Separation” moment is the son of Gene DiFilippo, the Boston College athletic director who just fired head coach Jeff Jagodzinski, whose name was mentioned in at least one rumor reported out of Oakland), tight ends coach Kelly Skipper, defensive line coaches Keith Millard and Don Johnson, linebackers coach Don Martindale (Ryan’s right-hand man, who could be a candidate to replace him, or join him in Cleveland), defensive backs coaches Darren Perry and Randy Hanson, quality control coaches Adam Henry, Sanjay Lal, George Martinez and John Fassel, and strength coach Brad Roll.

One assistant who isn’t likely going anywhere is squad development coach Willie Brown, a Raider lifer who also works with the defensive backs. But the 23-year veteran staffer’s role could change, depending on who comes in as head coach.

Oakland Raiders Owner Al Davis

Earlier today, I sent a letter to ESPN.com’s ombudsman, Le Anne Schreiber.

I would like to claim columnist’s privilege and reprint it here.

It is regarding this article, and more directly, this quote from analyst Chris Mortensen:

In an e-mail to The Associated Press, ESPN stood by the report.

“The Raiders have lost the privilege with me [Mortensen] of running stories past them for comment,” the e-mail stated. “This stems from their history of denials to most stories I have reported — as well as others in the media — when those stories have eventually proven to be true. The latest example is I reported that Al Davis planned to interview Giants offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride and, of course, the story was trashed by a team spokesman.”

As a veteran professional journalist, not just for Silver & Black report, but for several daily newspapers, I felt compelled to speak (as, apparently, did Inside Bay Area’s Jerry McDonald).

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