Sep 30th 2008 7:49PM by Ryan Wilson (author feed)
Filed under: Raiders, AFC West, NFL Fans, NFL Coaching, NFL Video

Great news, Lane Kiffin: when God closes a door, he opens a window. Or something. The second-year Raiders head coach is out of a job, and owner Al Davis has the freakiest press conference in NFL history to show for it. Ah, to be a Raiders fan.

To the madness: some choice bits from Davis’ surprisingly coherent but still extraordinarily bizarre presser (click that handsome mug above for the moving-pictures proof).
“Maybe I didn’t want to admit that I made a mistake … to be quite frank with you, I’m firing him for cause now, I’m not firing him for anything else other than cause. …

I reached a point where I felt the whole staff, we were fractionalized … that the best thing to do … was to make a change. It hurts because I picked the guy. I picked the wrong guy. This is regretful, but I thought it was best for the Raiders. And I wanted to make it work, because I want the Raiders to do great. Someone said to me the other day, a newspaper man, ‘Why don’t you tell us your side of the story? Why don’t you tell us what’s happening?’ And I said to him, look, I don’t want to win in the press, I want to win on the field” Um, ? Of course, Davis then proceeded to ignore himself and try to win in the press. Or, at the very least, malign Kiffin in such a way that he comes off looking like a guy who’s fresh off running a bed and breakfast. Davis read from a letter he had given Kiffin prior to the Week 3 Chiefs game that included this nugget of awesomeness:Continue Reading