Tom Cable sat at the same table where, four months earlier, Al Davis gave a rambling, incoherent power-point presentation spelling out why Lane Kiffin was a rat fink. And it's that same reason why Cable is having the interim label removed from his coaching title. (Though, with any Raiders coach, interim might not be the formal term, it's a realistic one.)Cable, you see, is an exterminator. He cleaned up after Kiffin's extermination and fumed when the rat fink started raiding the Raiders coaching staff for his Tennessee program. (Good luck after fishing out of that polluted pond.)
Cable gets rid of the rat finks.
But Cable's biggest accomplishment was vanquishing Davis' biggest irritant since Pete Rozelle. Cable ended Jon Gruden's coaching stay in Tampa Bay. The moment the Buccaneers dropped the hammer on Gruden, Cable was hired.
The Raiders win over the Buccaneers kept Tampa Bay out of the playoffs. The Raiders upset also led to Gruden's firing. The moment that happened, Davis became indebted to Cable.
Would Cable be coaching the Raiders today if he lost that game? Probably not. But by ending Gruden's NFL coaching career (for now), Cable was able to extend his own.
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