Tom Cable’s three wishes

By Os Davis  |   Monday, November 17, 2008  |  Comments( 35 )

Oakland Raiders
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Tom Cable disconsolately sat in his guest team’s office Sunday after another Oakland Raiders loss, this time going down to the Miami Dolphins in the final minute after 59:30 of playing a winnable game. Everyone else had cleared off, coaches and players long on the way back home to nightclubs or restaurants or the hotel; even the ministrations to the wounded would-be meal ticket JaMarcus Russell had been completed a half-hour ago and Kwame Harris was out doing what the Kwame Harrises of our world go out to do.

It was quiet enough to hear a pass drop, and emptier than that fifth of Jack he had stashed would soon (soon!) be.

Until he found the magic Gatorade bottle.

Conspicuously lying dead-center in the visitors’ locker room floor it was, but that wasn’t the strangest thing about the thing. Cable imagined that he heard little snippets of noise emanating from within, sounds of cheering and football excitement made nasal when squeezed through the bottle’s nozzle; Cable was vaguely reminded of the effect in "Field of Dreams" – no, Shoeless Joe, the book on which the Kevin Costner flick was based – as he slowly approached, figuring his head was playing tricks on him again. (Wearing that damn headset for three hours always ended up screwing with his hearing for 12 hours afterward.)

But that was only the third-strangest thing.

The strangest things were the fact that the Gatorade bottle was utterly unique as far as Cable knew in its 20K goldness. The oddest? That multicolored semimalevolent-looking cloud steadily bobbling out the top, curling and refolding back into the bottle and back out again and again, almost beckoning. No: No “almost.”

Well, Cable picked the Gatorade bottle up, as people in these sorts of situations do (not without some difficulty, either, ‘cause that solid-gold sucker was heavy). And he rubbed the bottle, as typically happens for – poof! – the requisite genie to appear; this one’s bedecked in zebra stripes and immediately makes it clear that he’s a football-centric genie, perhaps even confessing past experience with, say, John Madden. Amazement, bamboozlement, an offer of three wishes, Cable thinks hard.

And ultimately, under more pressure than Marques Tuiasosopo trying to lead a team with no wide receivers in a two-minute drill, Cable, as happens in these stories, comes up with three wishes. For his Raiders, in light of a disappointing loss in Miami, Cable spread the wealth: One wish per unit.

“I wish someone else were doing the play-calling.” Maybe alone from home and home media, talking to an ethereal spirit he only marginally believed to be there at all, would Cable admit that he basically can’t cut the imaginative mustard as an in-game play-caller: The Dolphins game was another endless series of three-and-outs “fueled” by Justin Fargas’ willpower; with the Raiders going 2-for-11 on third-down attempts and the offense producing exactly zero points for Oakland once again, Cable is putting the “nil” in “vanilla” quite effectively.

“I wish we’d had Justin Miller all year this year instead of that high-maintenance distraction DeAngelo Hall.” Yes, Miller didn’t get a chance to really break off a nice kickoff, but the man showed early his competence at CB and his confidence on returns. As it turns out, Miller may have been the right man to complete the truly fearsome secondary Raider Nation has been dreaming about since Hall and Gibril Wilson signed up with the USS Nnamdi Asomugha; who would have guessed this at the beginning of the 2008 season?

(And can you imagine how good special teams would have been with both Miller and Johnnie Lee Higgins as presences on returns? Let’s see, you definitely win the Jets game, probably the Bills game, maybe the Chargers game, and with a spot of luck further, the Panthers game. But then Lane Kiffin is still around ... would making this wish nullify the existence of “interim head coach” Tom Cable?)

“I wish my Raiders would stop giving up the big play.” Against Buffalo, Trent Edwards’ wide-open 22-yard completion on third down in the fourth quarter triggered yet another Bills TD and ultimately the win. Against San Diego, it was LaDainian being allowed to whip off a door-slamming 41-yard score. Against Miami, there was the 41-yard reverse that had the Raiders exposing one entire half of the field on which Ted Ginn Jr. was allowed to romp for six. Or how about Chad Pennington’s little 7-yard pass to Ginn on fourth down in the fourth on the game-winning drive? Or how about the 22-yarder to Davone Bess on the same drive?

All of the above were just off the top of the head. Also, they were mistakes, costly mistakes, and few were the result of perfectly executed flawless offenses; rather, blame blown coverage and busted plays from the ‘D’ all year long.

So, the wishes depleted, the universe immediately began shifting to accommodate Cable’s desires, morphing its very shape around him. Sure, the Raiders now had a potentially winning team and an outside shot going deep into the playoffs, but as is always the case in this sort of story, the wisher is filled with regret at what he didn’t think of five minutes ago.

“Wait! Wait! I wish there were no such thing as the false start penalty! I wish I had been a coach on Madden’s teams! I wish Al Davis would leave me the team in his will and then pop off! Wait! Come back, genie!”
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About Os Davis

Os Davis has taken a twisted route to get to RealFootball365.com in his nearly 17 years in professional writing, working in any number of capacities in the sportswriting, news reporting and film criticism worlds. In print media, Os has served as editor at a few publications, including Albuquerque's...
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