Oakland Raiders Endure Week of Winning and Losing Popular Coach: Does It End?

One week ago, the Oakland Raiders were looking at their last week of the 2010 football season. A fan of the Raiders could look at the season as one that got away and looking at the Kansas City game, might take some of the sting out of going 8-8.

As it was, someone forgot to tell Kansas City and the Chiefs that these Raiders were angry. They were cheated and they wanted something to mark this season.

After 60 minutes of football last Sunday, the Raiders went out on a high note, throttling the Chiefs in their own stadium, where they had previously not lost.

Matt Cassel was harassed to no end, to the point his coach elected to pull the quarterback before he really got hurt—but not before he threw two interceptions, one returned for a touchdown.

That evening, there were already messages floating on the airwaves, across the Internet that Tom Cable was slated to be let go.

Seriously? Why?

Here was a popular coach, a friend of the family, if you will. He had tolerated JaMarcus Russell's immaturity issues and dealt with being demoted to a degree with Hue Jackson coming on board.

But the team had responded, with the club picking up three more wins and lasting until the second-to-last week, before being eliminated from the playoffs. Much better than Week 9 or 10, right?

Apparently, this still didn't set right with Al Davis, who must have taken offense to Cable's, "We are not losers anymore," when to Al, the Raiders are never losers. Reaching 8-8 was not a part of the plan Al had in place—he wanted the playoffs.

It didn't matter to Al that Janikowski missed three field goals in Arizona, or that a Jacksonville player was given a touchdown by biased refs...to him, Raiders had to be in the playoffs.

No playoffs, no option for Tom.

So, the news came quickly, which was a bit of a shock, to the Raider Nation. People who were calling the media l...

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