All Aboard!

By MikeBullock  |   Thursday, November 12, 2009  |  Comments( 0 )

Oakland Raiders
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While Tom Cable is saying things like “I can see the mountaintop,” anyone who’s paid attention to the Raiders over the last decade knows what Cable is really seeing is the writing on the wall. The light at the end of Cable’s tunnel is the pain train, bearing down on him.

With various allegations of domestic abuse coming at him from the media, the NFL investigating and evaluating him for possible counseling and the latest rumors that Al Davis is looking for a way to fire Cable for cause (if you’re unsure of what ‘fired for cause’ means, ask Lane Kiffin) it’s humanly impossible to put the amount of focus into coaching that Oakland needs right now.

In a recent ESPN interview, former Raider great Tim Brown said this of QB JaMarcus Russell, “When he comes off the field, they look at each other like, `What happened?’ Nobody can explain what just happened, and I think that is the biggest problem that he has is he finds out what the problem is on Monday morning.”

And guess what, Russell can’t ask Cable either because chances are, he doesn’t know. The pressures of coaching an NFL franchise are tremendous. Add to that the extra, unrelated stresses Cable is facing, while considering the fact he’s no John Madden by any stretch of the imagination and all the “rampant optimism” in the world coming out of the bye week won’t equal a turnaround for this team.

Just look what happened the last time a Raider group had a good head coach with such distractions? Too busy being caught up with contract talks, Jon Gruden became “disconnected” from the team, as stated by a former player, which led to their eventual ousting from the playoffs in a year they should have brought home the fourth Lombardi trophy for Davis’s mantle. And, Cable is certainly no Gruden.

While many players have stepped up to the Kool-Aid bar, their comments are the same year in and year out.

“We didn’t play well in the first half,” said middle linebacker Kirk Morrison. “We looked at ourselves, made some corrections and now it’s trying to go out there and put what we did in this bye week to use. I felt like there’s a lot of good football that we have left to play and we’ve got to go out and show everybody that what we did in the first half is really not what this football team is all about, getting back to the basics, just making sure we handle our business, and stay true to who we are.”

If what they learned in the off season and training camp wasn’t put to good use in the first eight games, and nothing changed over the bye week except more distraction heaped on Cable and the team, why would the second half be any better?

With an offense averaging a pathetic 9.8 points per game, even the lowly Chiefs, Redskins and Browns aren’t easy wins. In fact, those three teams are probably salivating at the chance to play Oakland, so they can taste victory for once.

Then look at the rest of the second half schedule, with includes the Bengals, Cowboys, Steelers and Broncos, all 6-2 teams, and it’s very easy to see the pain train is coming to Oakland, and Cable is tied to the tracks.
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