Raiders will put Thanksgiving on hold

ALAMEDA — At Tom Cable's day-after press conference Monday, someone asked him if he had any specific plans for celebrating Thanksgiving.

“Win,” the Raiders coach shot back.

Then he paused for a beat or two. Cable seemed to understand that he may have come across a little dismissive of the family table, pumpkin pie and Miles Standish. “No, I don't want to sound like I don't care about Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving,” he continued. “But we have a job to do. We have to stay focused to it.

Certainly we'll get the opportunity on Friday for families and all those sort of things.” In one answer, Cable fairly well summarized the ambiguity of a Thanksgiving Day NFL game. On one hand, it's a chance to play before a national audience that includes most of the league's players and coaches. On the other, it's a business day, and a complicated one at that.

As the Raiders are discovering for the first time in 39 years. The last time they played on Thanksgiving was Nov. 26, 1970, when they lost to the Detroit Lions, 28-14.

In the locker room this week, most of the players focused on the positives.

“I'm excited,” starting quarterback Bruce Gradkowski said. “I mean, we're very blessed to be playing on Thanksgiving Day. As a little kid growing up, you always dreamed of this day. And now to be able to play in front of a nationally televised audience on Thanksgiving, everyone's home with their families eating turkey, it's just unbelievable.”

Playing on Thursday does present its challenges, though. Five preparation days must be condensed into three, giving bruised bodies little time to heal and paranoid coaches a short time frame to correct mistakes, show film and teach this week's game plan.

The Oakland coaches actually got a head start on this game before playing Cincinnati. And they began breaking down the Cowboys — the Raiders will play at new Cowboys Stadium at 1:15 p.m. today — immediately after Sunday's 20-17 upset. Monday brought a real practice rather than mere film work, Tuesday was a practice day instead of an off day, and the team practiced Wednesday, too, before getting on a Dallas-bound plane at 2 p.m.

“It just speeds everything up, pushes everything up early,” Cable said. “But we'll still prepare like we normally would, business as usual in terms of who we're playing and the type of practice structure. All those things will be the same.” Cable has never played or coached on Thanksgiving before. The closest he's come was playing Nebraska the Friday after the holiday when he was at Colorado.

But there are still a few old Raiders in the building who remember that game against the Lions in 1970. The venue was Tiger Stadium, built as a baseball park.

“I can still recall the old beams going up, holding that portion of the roof up and all that type of thing,” said special projects liaison Jim Otto, the great center of the 1960s and early 1970s. “They had filled in the infield, as I recall, with grass, but it wasn't very good. Grass doesn't grow very well there late in the year, so the field was kind of rough.” Willie Brown — then a Pro Bowl cornerback, now defensive backs coach — separated his shoulder two weeks before the game and didn't expect to play.

“We were getting ready to play back there and we had a couple of corners get hurt,” Brown said. “So I had them tape up my shoulder and I was dressed and everything just in case. Next thing I know, two weeks after operating on my shoulder, I was back in the game playing.” Things didn't go well for the Raiders. They jumped to a 14-0 lead on two first-quarter touchdown passes from Daryle Lamonica to Fred Biletnikoff, then saw a very good Lions team (they would make the playoffs that year at 10-4) come back to win 28-14 while rushing for 262 yards.

“Yeah, it was a strange game,” Otto said. “We should have won, there was no doubt it. We had some things where we broke down a little bit, and they went on to beat us. I was kind of disappointed.” The Raiders also played four Thanksgiving games in the AFL, beating the Broncos in 1963, the Chiefs in 1967 and the Bills in 1968, and losing to Buffalo in 1966.

Thursday, while most of us are gathered to relax and indulge, the Raiders will be punching the time clock. But there is a silver lining.

The Cowboys have just as little time to get ready. And once the game is over, the Raiders will have an extra three days to prepare for their Week 13 opponent, the Super Bowl-champion Pittsburgh Steelers.

For more on the Raiders, go to Instant Raiders at raiders.blog.pressdemocrat.com. You can reach Staff Writer Phil Barber at 521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com.