Time to disconnect this Cable

OAKLAND - It is rare when something this definitive happens in a football game.

I’m not talking about the Chiefs’ 20-13 victory over the Raiders. I’m talking about the end of interim coach Tom Cable, as in based on the pranks he pulled against the Chiefs, this guy does not stand a chance to become the fulltime coach.

It ended for Cable on Sunday, as in the Cable got disconnected. It ended because he tried to be creative but ended up faking himself out and ruining the game. By now you know about the play that did him in. For a full description of it please read Phil Barber’s game story — my friend Phil is a terrific descriptive writer.

I’ll give you a taste. With the game tied at 3, the Raiders lined up for a field goal. But Cable was feeling creative, or maybe he’d flipped his noodle because all of a sudden holder Shane Lechler did some kind of Harlem Globetrotter maneuver, slipping the ball between his legs while in a semisquatting position. He was instructed to hand the ball to Sebastian Janikowski who runs like a whale but somehow was supposed to cover something like 18 yards for a first down — not in this world, not in this life, not a load like Seabass. Cable said the play had worked in practice. Sure, Tom.

Anyway, you know the result. The ball got away. A Chief picked it up and ran it in for the TD. And just about then Cable’s Raider career came unplugged. It had to. Even if you weren’t a judgmental, hard, difficult, unyielding man like Al Davis, if you were Mother Teresa you’d fire Cable’s butt after a 10-point play like that. Why 10 points? The 3 Oakland didn’t get with the spurned field goal and the 7 Kansas City got with the TD.

Afterward, I asked Cable if Lechler really put the ball between his legs and if the play is supposed to work like that?

“He did and it does,” Cable said.

Tom, you’ve got to go. No one in his right mind calls a play at a crucial moment — or at any moment — in which a guy kind of dribbles between his legs like Baron Davis. No, Tom. Never, Tom. Tom you’re out of here.

“I think you need to be creative,” Cable said.

He can be creative in his next job, whatever that is. Maybe he’ll be the guy who towels down your car when you drive out of the carwash. He can do backhand toweling and he can towel standing on his head or performing jumping jacks. But in this job, quickly squirting out of his nervous fingers, he needs to stay balanced and play the percentages, especially against a team he could beat.

Oh, yes, the Raiders certainly could have defeated the Chiefs except for how Cable coached. In case you missed it, KC came into the Raiders game 1-19 in its previous 20 tries. That is not simply bad. It is grotesque.

Yet the Cable Raiders could not beat the Chiefs. And let’s be clear about this. Cable never was a serious coaching candidate until last week when he miraculously beat Denver in Denver. Suddenly, he seemed to know a thing or two. And then this loss.

So the guy became a candidate and a non-candidate all in eight days. That’s one of the quickest rises and falls in the history of Western Civilization.

So you won’t think I’m calling for Cable’s firing over one bad call, which happened to be the worst call ever, please think about the Raiders’ next possession. Remember the score was only 10-3 Chiefs and it was the second quarter so there was time to be calm and vigilant and strategic, especially for a coach hanging by a thread.

The Raiders drove downfield and got to the Chiefs’ 22 and now it was fourth-and-3 and Cable decided to go for it. It shows guts to go for it on fourth-and-3, although the field goal was the right call, the only call. So that was Cable’s first mistake — well, the fake field goal on the previous possession was his first mistake. This merely was his first mistake in the present situation.

He went for it on fourth down, but there are different kinds of going for it. One idea is to get, unique concept here, the three yards — low degree of difficulty, infinite ways to get them. You could tell the tailback to run for it, or the quarterback to sneak for it, or the quarterback to screen-pass for it. You could do an infinite number of things. But Cable didn’t do any of them. He made his next bad decision.

He called for a long pass, the one thing you don’t do. It is so low percentage, especially with that quarterback. This is not the place to eviscerate JaMarcus Russell but, come on, he was dreadful Sunday, over-throwing receivers even on short passes. He looked confused, or was it preoccupied, and please stop with the sorry excuse that he missed training camp 2007. The statute of limitations has run out on that alibi.

He is currently a not-very-good QB. And this is the guy who was told to throw deep to Ronald Curry, a do-or-die pass into the end zone, a die pass that, naturally, sailed past Curry.

Cable: “It was a little bit of an overthrow.”

You think? And with that the drive was over. Two times in a row the Raiders had gone past the Chiefs’ 30 and gotten no points. That’s another reason Cable gets fired.

But mostly he gets fired because he had such promising momentum after defeating the Broncos and he squandered it, fumbled it away with his silly ideas. That’s the essence of a bad coach.

For more on the world of sports in general and the Bay Area in particular go to the Cohn Zohn at cohn.pressdemocrat.com. You can reach Staff Columnist Lowell Cohn at 521-5486 or lowell.cohn@pressdemocrat.com.