Who’s the coach, Uncle Al?

By Os Davis  |   Monday, January 05, 2009  |  Comments( 16 )

Oakland Raiders
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While many a hometown fan enjoys the schadenfreude-heavy firing of an overwhelmed, incompetent and/or just plain wrong man for the head coaching job, a far greater highlight of the NFL offseason is the buildup to the hire.

As with so many other processes in which this front office is involved, the coaching situation in Oakland is murky; speculation goes unanswered and, oh, boy, is there much to speculate on. Will Tom Cable just be given the job? Have any interviews been scheduled? Who can make something from this unformed protoplasmic mass of a football team? Can anyone get along with Al Davis?

Mike Shanahan. Tell me this simply isn’t the ideal fit for the current state of the Raiders: Oakland boasts a QB with John Elway-like potential, a running game already equipped with three 1,000-yard rushers, and the makings of a decent pass defense. We all know these guys have gobs of raw talent, while mainstream media portray the team as a shark taken from the water: strong and dangerous to the point of lethality, but utterly out of control; current “wisdom” would have a strong hand instantly turning the silver and black into a 10-6 playoff team. And it says here there ain’t no stronger hand out there than Shanahan right now.

Throw in the fact that making Shanahan the top Raider would guarantee two smokings of the Denver Broncos every season, and the only question is why the Oakland-minded end of the blogosphere is continuously chatting up this possibility.

What’s that? Prior history? Ah, come on, that was the 1990s! And this is business!

Raheem Morris. From out of nowhere, Morris (who?) has become a hot commodity, at least in Denver. Morris went from 2008 secondary coach in Tampa Bay to prospective defensive coordinator for 2009, and reportedly landed an interview for head coach with Denver last week. Morris is the type of guy habitually described in the popular press with words like “prodigy,” “wunderkind,” and “whiz,” and will seemingly bag a head coaching spot before most of America knows the man’s name. He may even have a winning season in him.

Kind of like Eric Mangini. Or even Lane Kiffin.

Which is the No. 1 problem with a theoretical hiring of Morris in Oakland. When Uncle Al woke up and read in the Contra Costa Times (yeah, surrrrrrrrrrrre) that the Broncos were making a play for the 32-year-old, you know he had to have gotten those old Kiffinesque (or Grudenesque or even Shanahanian) stirrings in the loins: Young guy, with no bad experiences in the NFL, an ambitious rank-riser ... it’s all there for a Morris/Davis love affair.

Now. Let us pause, allow a little memory to settle in so as to reflect on the fashion in which the Tampa Bay secondary slacked and slept through the last month of the season. And that for the year, the Buccaneers allowed exactly one more passing TD than they snagged interceptions, 23 to 22. Next!

Jon Gruden. Don’t you wish it were possible, Raider Nation? Not even a little bit? Maybe the Raiders could throw in a draft pick and some cash...

Bill Cowher. Sadly unavailable, though flattered. Another apparently ideal fit for the Raiders, Cowher simply has to be the most wanted man in football right now. Why hasn’t ESPN.com come up with a superlative for the Steeler coach’s current circumstances? How about “Greatest Coach to Stay Unemployed For Two Years, All Time”? Or maybe “Greatest Former Head Coach Ever To Re-up His One-Year Contract With a Pre-Game Show”?

All right, back to reality. Is anyone else wondering what happened to the Jim Fassel flirtation? Back in early November, you may recall, Fassel, probably while giggling his way through another of Cable’s game plans unfolding literally and figuratively on the TV, composed a letter replete with expressions of “his respect and admiration for Davis” and argument for hiring him – primarily that he’s unemployed and straight up wants the job.

Which is a compelling argument.

Sure, Fassel’s record as head coach and offensive coordinator is mostly middling – as a top dog, he went 25-33 in his debut at University of Utah in the late '80s, and 58-53-1 with the New York Giants in the late '90s/early '00s – but he’s got history with the club going back to Art Shell’s team in 1990. And did he mention that he wants the job?

As for negatives, Fassel in his later career acquired the nasty habit of getting dismissed during the season. He was ejected from the Giants as head coach in 2003 and from the Ravens as O-coordinator in 2006, though neither dismissal was totally justified.

Fassel has typically achieved more for less and is a decent organizer and motivator in the short term: qualities ideal for what currently ills the Raiders. This may be a rare opportunity for the Raiders, with a Fassel hiring resulting in a competent (if not brilliant) hand organizing some of the mess on this roster as much as is humanly possible.

Wrote it before and I may write it again: This is so crazy it just might work.

Tom Cable. Once a choice of desperation, Cable has now become the default. Maybe. It’s so hard to tell, what with all these “sources” in Raider camp secretly talking to media and Chris Mortensen apparently just crafting stories out of thin air, but because no denial has come from Davisville, we’ll assume Cable is still shortlisted to keep the position he holds in interim.

Despite his frankly bland play-calling through most of his tenure in 2008, Cable is surely considered a strong candidate, if only for those back-to-back wins closing out the season. But is that truly enough? Can a low-watt offense that all too often relied on special teams to provide field position inside the maroon zone to start a drive be developed with Cable calling run-run-desperation pass-punt continuously? (Really, didn’t it seem like the Raiders didn’t put together a single 50-yard drive between the bye week and the Texans game?) Could replacing a few assistant coaches here and there put these Raiders over the top? Doesn’t seem likely, does it?

So how about it, Raider Nation? Whom do you like? Or maybe that should be, “Whom do you dislike least?”
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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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