Coaching for Raiders Could Use Fassel Fuel

Raiders Talk With Gilbride

By JOSH DUBOW
AP Sports Writer

ALAMEDA (AP) – Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis had a 90-minute phone conversation with New York Giants offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride about the team’s coaching vacancy.
The two spoke Jan. 3 after Gilbride had expressed interest in the job through his agent, Raiders senior executive John Herrera said Jan. 4.

Gilbride is the first outside candidate to talk to Davis about the job. Interim coach Tom Cable is also a candidate after running the team for the final 12 games following the firing of Lane Kiffin in September.
Gilbride’s only previous head coaching experience in the NFL came in 1997-98, when he went 6-16 for the San Diego Chargers. Gilbride is a longtime assistant in the NFL and helped the Giants win the Super Bowl last season, then earn the top seed in the NFC playoffs this season.

The Raiders cannot talk to Gilbride again until the Giants’ season is over.

Cable is a serious contender for the job after winning the final two games of the season, including a season-ending victory over Tampa Bay that knocked former Raiders coach Jon Gruden’s team out of the playoffs. Cable had a 4-8 record after replacing Kiffin.

Cable is still under contract until Jan. 13, and has talked with Davis over the past week about the team.

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Columnist Suggests Hiring Jim Fassel

Adam Owens, Sac Union Sports Writer -

Published: January 8, 2009

As much as it would please me to see both of Northern California’s NFL teams being led by minority head coaches, and as much as I generally detest the decades-old trend of recycling head coaches at the expense of fresh faces and ideas, I have to go against both instincts and nominate Jim Fassel as the Raiders’ next head man.

Tom Cable? Please. Those two wins to close out the season did absolutely nothing to convince me that (a) his 2-6 record at the helm before that or (b) his 11-35 record in four years as head coach at University of Idaho were aberrations.

Cable was an offensive lineman as a player, and he’s nothing more than an offensive line coach now. Keep him out of loyalty, give him his old post back and move on.

The NFL’s “Rooney Rule” mandates that clubs interview at least one minority candidate for any head coach vacancy – and isn’t that a sad state of affairs in 2009? – but with the exception of James Lofton, there aren’t any viable minority candidates from within Al Davis’ extended, dysfunctional family.

And Lofton, the Raiders wide receivers coach, has been passed over twice for the top job in Oakland, first when it went to Kid Kiffin in 2007, and again when KK was spanked out of town. So Lofton is clearly missing whatever Davis is looking for.

Fassel, however, is everything that Davis should be looking for.

He’s a proven NFL winner, first and foremost. No more bringing in upstarts like Kiffin for a while. It worked – sort of – with Chucky Gruden, and Kiffin was an abject failure. Fassel was anything but a failure in his previous gig as an NFL head man. From 1997-2003 with the New York Giants, he won an NFL Coach of the Year award (1997), went to the playoffs three times, made it to the Super Bowl in 2000, and prior to his final season, during which the Giants were devastated by injuries and went 4-12, his record was 54-41.

Fassel also has a history of developing quarterbacks, having worked with John Elway and Phil Simms. Heck, he got to the Super Bowl with Kerry Collins! Think he might be able to help JaMarcus Russell?
And finally, Fassel knows exactly how Davis operates because he very much is part of the extended family. He was the quarterbacks coach in 1995, and that team was cruising along at 8-2 before they lost QB Jeff Hostetler and lost their final six games; the backups included Billy Joe Hobert and Vince Evans.

Word is Fassel sent Al a letter saying he wants the job. Al should give it to him.