FanHouse Al DAvis

The best NFL news on Wednesday was that Brian Westbrook will not play this week. He may be your starting running back in your fantasy league, but the Philadelphia Eagles' all-time leader from scrimmage with 9,711 yards also is a man who is recuperating from two concussions in 20 days.

Right now, Westbrook is not just an NFL star. He is a medical patient.

Thankfully, everyone realizes it's time to focus on Westbrook's health and future well-being, and not how he can help move the chains for the Eagles' offense.

It's been a rough season for the Oakland Raiders. Not only is the team as bad as, well, usual, but head coach Tom Cable has found himself stuck in a controversy himself.

After he was cleared of any criminal charges after an assistant coach accused him of assault, an ex-wife and ex-girlfriend accused Cable of physical abuse. It appears Cable is going to catch another break on this latest issue.

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The Boss, the one who rules Major League Baseball, wasn't in New York Wednesday night as the Yankees celebrated their 27th World Series title with a 7-3 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies. But George Steinbrenner, 79 -- still the architect of champions and the titan of New York sports -- was watching from his home in Tampa.

Every out. Every pitch. Every player celebration. Steinbrenner could see and hear his players express their gratitude, and his family said he was overcome with joy.

"Thank you. Thank you for everything," Yankees catcher Jorge Posada told the owner through a camera lens. "Thank you for this. Thank you for having the team every year, to try to have a team to be here [the World Series]."

The Boss is not in robust health these days. He wasn't in the clubhouse to feel the champagne shower. But he was "teary eyed" said his son, Hank. "It meant everything."

Al Davis has gotten a pretty bad rap when it comes to personnel acumen over the last few years thanks to ill-advised trades and free agent signings. The video below may change your mind about the Raiders owner, however.

Many players have been described as being so fast that they fly downfield, none of them have literally done it. Until now, that is.

What follows is a fabricated* letter from JaMarcus Russell to Al Davis. Clay Travis, armed with a hacksaw and a flip cam, altered a peephole to obtain its contents.

Dear Al,

You told me to call you Al when you drafted me back in 2007. You said I could call you Al because you used to be a black panther. I think you said, "I feel you, baby." Then you felt my shoulder. Now I'm offering you a shoulder to lean your head on. I want you to sleep well at night, Al. I want you to do away with all your worries and climb aboard a train to Super Bowl Village. I want you to name me head coach of the Oakland Raiders. I'm ready, I'm prepared. I'm agog at the potential of the Oakland Raiders.

I can be your Pete Rose. Only without the gambling or the baseballs or the baseball bats. Really though, baseballs are just like footballs, only smaller and whiter. Also, not ovals. I'm a lot like Pete Rose too, only fatter, blacker and not prone to hustle. To be honest, I don't even like to run at all. I prefer to stand still and watch men break on me. I'm like Hemingway's Frederic Henry if Hemingway was not capable of subject-verb agreement. Quarterback-coach, it has a nice ring to it, right?

I've decided to itemize the reasons I should be coach. By the end of this letter you'll see that our philosophies, our offensive goals, my proven track record of success, the fact that you are already paying me a lot of money, myriads of reasons militate my hire.

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Rich Gannon was the MVP of the 2002 NFL season, leading Oakland to an AFC championship and Super Bowl berth. That's where things began to unravel between Gannon and the Raiders, though.

Gannon threw five interceptions in a Super Bowl XXXVII loss to Tampa Bay, then suffered serious injuries in 2003 and 2004. And now the Raiders don't even want him in the same building -- according to the San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland team officials have banned Gannon from participating in pregame television production meetings with his CBS crew, a direct violation of NFL policy.

"Rich Gannon is not welcome here," Raiders executive John Herrera told the Chronicle. "We told CBS we did not want him in our building, we did not want him to be part of our production meeting, and that's where it sits."

Richard Seymour's twisted, tortured road to Oakland appeared to smooth on Saturday when the former New England Patriots defensive end said he is making his way to the Raiders' Alameda training headquarters.

"I'll be the one on top of the quarterback," Seymour told the Boston Herald, indicating he plans to play in the Raiders' season opener Monday night againt the San Diego Chargers at the Oakland Coliseum.

For the Oakland Raiders, "Commitment to Excellence" has taken on a whole new meaning in recent years. The organization has won 24 times in six seasons, and owner Al Davis is solely responsible for the current predicament.

The latest move -- sending the Patriots a 2011 first-round pick for Richard Seymour -- virtually guarantees that the ineptitude will continue. And if you're wondering how Davis, who shipped Randy Moss to New England for a fourth-rounder in 2007, manages to sustain the haplessness, the Raiders trade chart cheat sheet might hold some clues.

A glimpse into the madness after the jump.

This is how it works in Oakland: Al Davis makes all the decisions. Most of them are short-term. You know the slogan -- "Just Win, Baby!" It's a great rhetoric, just like "The Greatness of the Raiders Will Continue In Its Future (sic)," is a hollow promise and grammatically challenged, all at the same time.

And while so many of these headline-grabbing transactions send the Black Hole crowd into delirium, recent history proves they are like putting a new spark plug into a blown engine.

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Oh, if only Tom Cable was cool. He'd own a nickname that would stick: The Cable Guy. He has this rough, gruff, boom-and-oomph way about him, like John Madden when he was coaching the Raiders. He's a man's man and a grunt's grunt and a football player's coach, from the gut to the facial hair to the burly look. Damn right he could hang with the rowdies in the Black Hole, terrorizing the enemy with all those Darth Vaders and skull-and-crossbones creeps.

But earlier this month, according to too many sources to discount, Cable either hit and broke the jaw of one of his Oakland assistant coaches, Randy Hanson, or pushed a chair that caused Hanson to fall and hit his jaw. Either way, it wasn't cool. In fact, it was disturbingly volcanic behavior from a man who's supposed to be the most poised guy in the building, not the one losing his equilibrium simply because Hanson and the defensive coordinator, John Marshall, reportedly were having a disagreement.