Tom Cable Unlikely To Return to the Oakland Raiders: Al Davis To Blow It Again

Al Davis will go down in history as a great football mind, if not one of the greatest.  He's in the NFL Hall of Fame and the Raiders won three Super Bowls with him in charge.

Lately though, Davis has been anything but brilliant.

Adam Schefter has reported that the Oakland Raiders are unlikely to pick up head coach Tom Cable's option going into next season: absurd.

The Raiders went undefeated in the division in 2010 and finished the season with a record of 8-8.  That's the best they've finished since 2002 when they went to the Super Bowl, three wins better than any year in between.

It's not like this shouldn't be expected from Al Davis, yet another bonehead coaching decision to add to the long list.

Davis fired a young Mike Shanahan after four games into the 1989 season.  Shanahan went on to lead the Raiders' bitter rival, the Denver Broncos to two Super Bowl titles.

Davis later fired Jon Gruden right after the 2001 season.  Gruden took the Raiders from a sub-.500 team to a playoff contender in his third season as Oakland's head coach.

The season after he was fired, he led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a 48-21 Super Bowl victory against none other than the Oakland Raiders.

Let's not forget the controversial hiring of Lane Kiffin.  At least Davis actually deserves credit for firing the man who turned out to be the biggest scumbag head coach in the world of sports.

Tom Cable may have had his troubles in the past, but he took this up-and-coming Raiders team farther than it has been in years, even without consistency from the quarterback position.

I'm not predicting Cable ends up getting revenge on the Raiders in the years ahead like Shanahan and Gruden did, but it would be a mistake to let Cable go after he helped the Raiders own the entire AFC West in 2010.

David Daniels is an NFL Featured Columnist and Writing Intern at Bleacher Report and a Syndicated Writer. Follow him at One Yard Short.com or on Twitter.