Tom Cable was right. He won’t be arrested.

Tom Cable was wrong. Something happened.
The Raiders’ head coach is surely relieved to know he won’t be spending his offseason watching game video in the Napa County Jail. But this doesn’t mean all is just ducky with Cable — or with his football team. Cable still faces potential NFL discipline. And the Raiders still face more losing Sundays, until further notice.
In fact, the most compelling part of Thursday’s events was how it gave us such a glimpse into the crazy Raiders coaching culture — which apparently is like a Three Stooges movie, except funnier.
It was no shock when the Napa district attorney, Gary Lieberstein, announced that he would not bring criminal charges against Cable for an incident that occurred at the Raiders training camp last summer.
Why no shock? Because, as Lieberstein said, he had no choice. Given the evidence, there’s no way he could prove that Cable’s actions directly caused the broken jaw of Randy Hanson, the assistant coach who accused Cable of attacking him during a staff meeting.
The three other witnesses in the room did not back up Hanson. Of course, the three other witnesses were coaches who all work for Cable.
Lieberstein deserves some credit, though. After a preposterously long investigation, he at least presented his findings in great detail. He outlined the scuffle that occurred in the meeting room at the Napa Marriott Hotel. He then answered every reporter’s question. This led to an amusing quote when Lieberstein was pressed on the level of confrontation that is permissible in the everyday workplace.
“You all in the football world,” Lieberstein said, “are in a different world than we live in, day to day.”
Uh, yes.
And with the Raiders especially, it is not day to day. It is minute to minute.
The relevant minutes on that afternoon of Aug. 5 were, according to the investigation, especially nutty.
Cable was talking to Hanson about his “future” with the Raiders, probably involving a demotion. Hanson was leaning back in a chair with his feet up on a table. Hanson said something that set off Cable, who “became angry and rushed toward Mr. Hanson.”
At this point, Moe stepped in front of Curly to keep him from Larry — ooops, one of the other coaches stepped in front of Cable to keep him from Hanson. Cable bumped into this other coach (who is not named in the report).
The other coach then bumped into Hanson’s chair. Hanson then tipped over and hit something that “likely fractured his jaw.”
Wait, there’s more. Cable then reached down and grabbed Hanson by the shirt but did not strike him. The other witnesses also said Cable never threatened to “kill” Hanson, as he had claimed.
After that, the staff meeting concluded. Yup, just the way to come up with a perfect game plan to beat San Diego.
Cable and the Raiders may see all this as vindication. I see it as a window into the team’s ongoing dysfunction.
Hanson, in the DA’s report, comes across as a quasi-pathetic figure. He did not immediately cooperate with the investigation and never agreed to a police interview until several weeks later, giving incomplete answers.
Then, earlier this month, Hanson surprised Napa authorities by showing up “unannounced” at police headquarters and stated that “since the Raiders had not given him what he asked for, he would now fully cooperate.”
It’s easy to read between the lines here. According to those who know him, Hanson was almost dementedly loyal to the Raiders and owner Al Davis. Hanson’s own attorney calls him “the biggest Raider fan.”
His lifelong dream was to be part of the team. He worked long, extreme hours. He was Davis’ alleged pipeline to the staff last year when Lane Kiffin was head coach and Davis was assembling information to fire Kiffin “with cause.”
Thus, even after the broken-jaw scuffle, Hanson was hoping to stay on with the team as a coach. Instead, the team continued to pay him but gave him nothing meaningful to do. Hanson may have thought this was just temporary. But after a while, Hanson figured out that he was never going to get back his coaching job. Only then did he evidently go to the police and tell his complete story.
Hanson, in other words, is a sad and borderline unhinged man. Well, guess which team hired him in 2007 and kept employing him? Which team kept putting him in meeting rooms with Cable, who clearly did not want Hanson there?
And how many other such “incidents” have happened with other Raider coaches, incidents that were never made public?
None of this excuses Cable for his actions, of course. Hanson’s attorney says he will file a civil suit against the Raiders, but that could likely be settled out of court.
The Napa report concludes that Cable “did not intend to inflict the injury suffered.” But when NFL commissioner Roger Goodell examines the case — he has been waiting for a legal resolution before acting — the standard will not be as strict. The NFL’s personal code of conduct allows Goodell to punish or suspend Cable for simply not behaving in a professional manner.
Will that happen? I have no idea. And it doesn’t really matter. The bigger issue is what the Raider players think about their coaching staff’s behavior, and how that translates into respect (or lack of it) for those coaches, and how it affects Sunday afternoons.
After initial reports of the August incident, Cable told reporters that “nothing happened” and predicted he would not be charged with a crime. He was correct about the latter, incorrect about the former.
Something happened. And it’s not over. With the Raiders, it never is.