Davis’s Public Smear Of Kiffin Par For The Course

In the wake of his clumsy, ham-handed firing by Al Davis, ex-Oakland Raiders coach Lane Kiffin was asked by ESPN’s Trey Wingo the following question.

“How much effect do you think this firing will have on your ability to find another head coaching job in the NFL?”

Kiffin, looking genuinely shocked and hurt throughout the interview with Wingo — not because of Wingo, but because of the disgraceful way he was treated by Davis — seemed surprised by the query.

“I haven’t really given that much of a thought,” Kiffin admitted.

I almost laughed. Not at Kiffin — but at the absurdity of the question. And I’m still not sure if Wingo had his tongue planted firmly in cheek when he asked it, though he should have.

That’s like asking a food poisoning victim if what happened to him will affect his being allowed into another restaurant.

I don’t know much about Lane Kiffin, other than he’s the son of Tampa Bay defensive coordinator Monte, and that he inherited a bad situation in Oakland and only had 20 games to try to make it better, in his first head coaching job. But I know plenty about Al Davis.

Watching Kiffin during that interview, in which he seemed on the verge of tears because of what Davis said about him during the presser announcing his firing, I thought that this is a young coach who will absolutely get a second chance somewhere in the NFL — and maybe even BECAUSE of what happened in Oakland.

Consider the source, someone once said. It’s such a universally accepted adage, it’s uttered on playgrounds.

Davis: Does this look like a man with all his faculties?

Davis has been grasping at straws ever since he wrongly let Bill Callahan go, just one year removed from a Super Bowl appearance. The madman Davis cited, at that time, some sort of player revolt. Then he gave Norv Turner two years, resurrected Art Shell for one, and now has pulled the plug on Kiffin just one year and four games into his tenure. With Kiffin, Davis is citing a pattern of lies and other things that Davis has filed under the category of insubordination. He let his coach twist in the wind ever since Week 1.

Davis reportedly overruled Kiffin when the coach wanted to fire defensive coordinator Rob Ryan after last season. Kiffin in turn said that Davis had reneged on a promise to give Kiffin total autonomy over which assistants stay and which go.

Now, some of the nonsense that went on behind the scenes probably should have stayed there, and if Kiffin had any hand in not ensuring that, then he should be held accountable. But again, privately.

But Al Davis doesn’t know the meaning of the words class and dignity. He certainly hasn’t grasped the concept of professional conduct. To hear him accuse Kiffin of that is laughable.

Davis went in front of the TV cameras and not only announced Kiffin’s dismissal, but he seemed to delight in twisting the knife deeper and deeper into the corpse, removing it, and then plunging it back in again. His verbal assault and slandering of his former coach was like watching one of those horror movie killers who gets that faraway, deranged look in his eye. Davis couldn’t stop himself. He also recounted how Kiffin asked him if being fired “with cause” — Davis’s words — meant that he wouldn’t get paid.

“That’s what I’m tellin’ ya,” Davis told the media of how he replied to Kiffin’s question.

Nice.

So not only does Davis not want Kiffin as his coach, he doesn’t want to pay him the remainder of his contract, either. You think we’ve heard the last of that?

I’ve seen coaches dangling by a thread before, and you have too. Yet the owner is able to partially redeem that by announcing the axing in a professional, emotionless, unbiased manner. In fact, the outgoing guy is usually shown undo respect as he’s being kicked to the curb. It may come off as slightly insincere, but at least it’s dignifying.

Of course, Davis couldn’t do that. He couldn’t just read the statement and take a few questions, which he could have firmly refused to answer if they went in the direction of whatever dirty laundry the team had. It might have been unfulfilling to the scribes, but it would have been the right thing to do. Instead, Davis chose to hitch Lane Kiffin to the back of a tractor and pull him through the mud — THEN kick him to the curb.

Kiffin, for his part, answered Wingo’s questions quietly and calmly, and resisted the urge to blast Davis on the air. The closest he came was when he said he felt “kind of embarrassed” for Davis as he watched himself being trashed.

And Kiffin showed class when he said that he had no regrets about taking the Raiders job, and that the experience would help him in the future.

So in response to Trey Wingo’s inquiry: I don’t know for sure if Kiffin will get another head coaching job in the NFL, but I do know that the list of well-qualified folks who would consider working for Al Davis has been dwindling annually for years now.

Hey, Lions fans: sound familiar?

January Football Now Means Something Else For NFL’s One-Time Great Teams

It was just a question, asked glibly, but the words cut to the bone of the die-hards of Da Bums in Brooklyn.

“The Dodgers…are they still in the league?”

It’s a quote I’ve known about for years and years, but only now, as I verify its source on the Internet, do I learn that it was uttered 74 years ago this week, on January 24, 1934. The questioner was New York Giants manager Bill Terry, and he was curious as to the existence of the rival Dodgers. The remark didn’t play well among Dodgers fans.

Terry was talking about possible contenders for the pennant in the upcoming ’34 season. When the matter of the Dodgers was brought up, Terry delivered his zinger.

74 years ago this week, Terry zinged the Dodgers

I’d like to propose a new question, this one for followers of the NFL.

“The Oakland Raiders…are they still in the league?”

I’d also like to ask it of the San Francisco 49ers, and of the Miami Dolphins.

Their fans may get mad at me all they want – still I’d like to ask it.

The truth is that those teams are, indeed, still in the NFL – but they’re not in it the way they used to be. Not even close. They’re all making news this January, but it’s the equivalent of the police blotter in comparison to their long ago days in the society pages.

January used to be glory time for the Raiders, 49ers, and Dolphins. It was the month when they were either crowned NFL champs, or at least played for the opportunity. They owned the first month of the year, often lending it to one another, the same way the Yankees and Dodgers used to swap October back and forth in baseball.

January meant Joe Montana and Jim Plunkett and Bob Griese and Dan Marino. It meant Jerry Rice and Cliff Branch and Paul Warfield and Mark “Super” Duper. And it usually meant that one of these three franchises would be clutching the Vince Lombardi Trophy in a parade a couple days after a Super Bowl.

But here’s what January is giving us in 2008.

The 49ers, five years removed from their last playoff game, fired their offensive coordinator and hired Mad Mike Martz, erstwhile Lions coordinator and certified genius. It wasn’t long before Martz’s hiring was adjudged to be a desperate move by a desperate organization, and one that it will regret in relatively short order.

The Dolphins, winners of one game in 2007, cleaned house. They hired Bill Parcells to run the show, and it didn’t take long for the firings to begin. The GM and the coach have been replaced, for starters. Some reports indicate that Parcells, about as qualified as anyone on this planet to resurrect moribund NFL franchises, placed a couple of phone calls to the Lions, who didn’t show any interest. The 1-15 Dolphins were amenable. Which means that Miami will soon leap frog the Lions, once again. Just a matter of time.

Then there’s the Raiders.

Al Davis is still the patriarch/Don of this very dysfunctional franchise. Then again, the Raiders have always been dysfunctional, even when they were winning. One of their favorite ploys was to take the league’s ne’er-do-wells and resurrect their careers, thru the magic elixir of wearing silver and black and conforming to a “Commitment to Excellence”. Many of the players on the champion Raider teams were deemed too old or too naughty by other squads. But then they signed to play for Davis’s team and while they may have indeed been too old or too naughty, they nonetheless found a way to win at remarkably high clips.

Davis: Losing more than football games in recent years?


The Raiders, somehow, made it to the Super Bowl as recently as five years ago. They lost – their first championship loss since Super Bowl II – and things have gone haywire ever since. The Super Bowl coach was fired a year later, and Davis is now going thru coaches at a rate that would make George Steinbrenner blush.

The latest victim is a bright young man named Lane Kiffin.

Kiffin is the son of longtime Tampa Bay defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin. And dad is having a much better year, already, than the kid. Monte Kiffin just inked a contract extension with the Bucs; Lane is being asked to turn in his playbook by Davis.

Lane Kiffin, in his first year as a head coach, went 4-12 with the 2007 Raiders. Now it’s being reported that Davis wants Kiffin to quit. Why? One reason is that if Kiffin resigns, Davis doesn’t have to pay the remainder of his contract – which Davis would have to do if he fires him.

Welcome to the life of an NFL head coach, kid.

The Raiders were bad in 2007, though they weren’t quite as bad as they were in 2006, in which their badness qualified them for the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft. They were bad in 2005, and pretty bad in 2004. And they look to be bad again in 2008. In another generation, it meant something completely different to be “bad” when it came to the Raiders. In those days, the Raiders were bad – which meant that they were very good, in a Mae West sort of way.

January doesn’t belong to the Raiders, or the 49ers, or the Dolphins – not anymore. At least, not on the football field. Theirs is now the news of losers and desperados.

To which we say in Detroit, “Welcome to our world.”

These Aren’t Your Father’s Raiders

They once stood for excellence and intimidation. Even their team colors, silver and black, were used as an all-encompassing adjective, that was to, all at once, describe their tenacity for winning and their refusal to let anything stand in the way of that.

They had a Mad Bomber as their QB, back in the day. And, later, one known as The Snake. And an owner that was perhaps just as mad, and just as much of a snake, if not more so. The QBs, Daryle Lamonica and Kenny Stabler (respectively), are long gone. So, too, is the owner — though not in body. Just in spirit and, if you listen to the whispers, barely in mind.

The Mad Bomber, Lamonica, looking for a target 40 yards downfield

Al Davis and his Commitment to Excellence. Once he prowled the sidelines as the team’s head coach. Then he dabbled as the AFL’s commissioner before returning to Oakland to manage the franchise. Then he was a thorn in NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle’s side, moving his franchise to Los Angeles and back to Oakland, and generally making life miserable for the commish. Oh, and along the way, his Raiders won some championships and threatened to win others.

Normally, an opening week matchup of the Lions and Raiders would mean a tune up for the Silver and Black, before they move on to bigger and better dragons to slay on their way to the playoffs.

Not this season.

The Raiders may still be committed to excellence, but there’s a big difference between saying it and doing it. No longer does the NFL team in Oakland possess the same deadly mix of talent, ne’er-do-wells, and players with chips on their shoulders to be a successful unit. Well, actually, they still have some ne’er-do-wells and guys with chips (i.e. Mike Williams and Daunte Culpepper), but the talent level is low, very low. Some would tell you that the Oakland Raiders, if all goes according to plan, might very well be the worst team in all of pro football.

Da Raiders — the worst team!

Could be.

They’re so bad (they were 2-14 last season), that it’s probably only their home field advantage, and the Lions’ terrible road history, that will make them favorites — or else they might be considered underdogs to the Lions, who were 3-13 last season and who are 24-72 since 2001.

But they have the heralded rookie QB JaMarcus Russell. He won’t start Sunday (that will most likely be Culpepper), and may not play much, if at all, this season. But he’s the quarterback of the future for the Raiders, and finally they have someone around whom to build a team.

That’s not the way they used to do it in Raider Nation. There wasn’t “one guy” that was The Franchise. The Raiders were a collection, an eclectic bunch of misanthropes who beat the snot out of you every Sunday and sneered and laughed about it. For years they had the best all-time winning percentage on Monday Night Football — a testament to how they thrived on the spotlight.

They were the bald-headed Otis Sistrunk and the goose-necked Ted Hendricks and the graceful Cliff Branch and the sticky Fred Biletnikoff. They were the ugly yardage of Marv Hubbard and the maiming hits of Jack Tatum. And they were, at one time, the bull-nosed linebacker play of one Matt Millen.

That was then.

Today, the Raiders are none of that. They are just another bad football team who are most likely already playing out the string. They are neither intimidating nor brash nor abrasive. They wear silver and black, but now those are just colors, not a means to an end.

But they had their time, once. Which is still more than I can say for the Lions, post-1957.