And so it begins

Monte Poole and Lowell Cohn call for Al Davis to fire Tom Cable, as in immediately. Because it's the bye week, that makes sense to me.

He's become an embarrassment. Money quote from Poole:

This isn't about expecting perfection from an authority figure. One of the greatest baseball managers of all time, Billy Martin, was ill-tempered and would swing on someone for breathing wrong. We know of Bob Knight's temper and that Bobby Cox once spent a night in jail after hitting his wife, though the charges were later dropped.

But as a coach, Cable does not belong in that discussion. Not that coaching well justifies violence. This is about wins and losses and image — about how a multimillion-dollar business would like to manage its brand. Cable is going where no Raiders coach has gone before. He is bringing shame upon the shield.

Shame upon the shield.

Allegedly, this is the number one offense in Raider land.

I don't have any illusions that this will improve anything. But a stand has to be taken. Sure, as this PFT post points out, there's plenty of "reasonable doubt." That works great as a constitutional guarantee. But it doesn't guarantee somebody a job, especially if these kinds of allegations and distractions keep coming up. What will we hear next? That he spent the night before the game stealing children's Halloween candy?

Cable's got to go. Al needs to go.

UPDATE: Missed this one by Kawakami. He brings up Al's intolerance for violence again women, and then writes of Cable:

OK, maybe he’s just an innocent bystander, assailed by an active conspiracy to bring him down. Maybe he’s truly the gentlest man in the world, and can’t understand where all these charges are coming from.

UNLIKELY. He has a history. The history is coming up.

Al has a history, too, and it’s firing coaches who displease him and running off those who embarrass him. Right now, Cable is doing both. Allegedly in one aspect and not-at-all allegedly in the other.