July 30, 2007

Cable tunes out talk of last year’s Raiders
By MARTY JAMES, Executive Sports Editor

NOTES AND QUOTES for a Monday in the Napa Valley:

Tom Cable doesn’t want to talk about last year’s Oakland Raiders season. He doesn’t want to rehash about what went wrong.

“Last year doesn’t matter to me,” said Cable. “I know what happened and I saw it. What matters is what we did today and what we’re going to do tomorrow.”

Cable wasn’t around last year when the Raiders’ offensive line gave up a league-high 72 sacks. He was in Atlanta, coaching a unit that was the driving force behind helping the Falcons lead the NFL in rushing.

Now he’s in Napa, taking on a rebuilding project that is the Raiders’ line and working alongside new head coach Lane Kiffin at training camp. Last year the Raiders finished with just 168 points, the fifth-lowest total in a 16-game season. They also failed to score an offensive touchdown in half their games and finished dead last in most of the major offensive categories.

“There’s a lot of work to do,” Cable said after a Saturday morning practice at Redwood Middle School. “You’ve got to kind of start over. There’s some guys that have got some talent. You’ve got some guys who have very little belief in themselves, so you really have to start over with them.

“Thus far, they’ve done everything I’ve asked. They’re learning to work hard. They’ve learning to compete. Now they’ve got to learn to play together. It’s just a process. I like what they’re doing.

“I just worry about their minds right now, because they’ve got the bodies. If I can help their minds and help them fundamentally, then we can go where we want to go.”

Cable is changing the way in which the Raiders run block, implementing a zone-blocking scheme to try and add life to an offense that had all kinds of problems last year. The NFL’s top running team for the last 13 years has used a zone blocking attack.

“We’re just doing something good, different and new — I’ll leave it at that,” the new Raiders assistant said. “We’re going to do it our way.”

Cable is working with 14 players — Barry Sims, Paul McQuistan, Jake Grove, Cooper Carlisle, Robert Gallery, Jeremy Newberry, Chad Slaughter, Kevin Boothe, Cornell Green, Mario Henderson, Ben Claxton, Albert Toeaina, Chris Morris and Mark Wilson — in camp.

Cable — who joined the Silver and Black during the offseason — said he told his players early on to forget about what’s happened in the past.

“There’s some very, very good young players here, from Robert Gallery down to Paul McQuistan and Kevin Boothe. They need to learn how to play the game the right way. Hopefully I can help them in terms of the scheme and teaching them and coaching them every day.”

From 2004-05, Cable was both the offensive coordinator and offensive line coach at UCLA, helping develop one of the most productive offenses in college football. During the 2005 season, he coordinated a UCLA offense that averaged 431 yards in total offense per game.

He’s a former head coach at Idaho and has been an assistant at Colorado, UC Berkeley, Idaho, San Diego State, Cal State Fullerton and UNLV.

Cable got right to work Friday, taking the line to an area of the training complex and coaching them on blocking techniques and other skills.

“They know I believe in them — that’s the biggest deal,” he said. “We’re going to go do this the right way. This is a good group of men. They really are good people and they’ve really got some talent to them. We’re all in it together. Let’s just go do it together.”

The American Legion state baseball tournament starts Sunday at the Veterans Home of California’s Cleve Borman Field in Yountville. The winners of six area tournaments head to the Napa Valley for one of the best tournaments of the year.