Not that that should make him feel any more secure in his job, mind you. Al Davis is about to explain why the idea of the head coach choosing his staff is an anachronism that has interfered with the efficient operation of the Oakland franchise. Al has taken over that duty to go with all his others: the draft, the roster, approval of the game plan, and general imperial supervision.

In other words, Cable is working under a new regime run by the same man, one that gives him less supervisory influence than before. His job has been narrowed without him even leaving the chair, which means that the Raiders are in a better position than any other team to have the 450th coach in NFL history.

Because Todd Haley is likely to be hired soon in Kansas City as the 449th coach in NFL history, you can see what this means.

We'd like to feel worse for Cable, but he has seen this coming for weeks, and he saw the matchup of nerves between Al and Lane Kiffin for a year and a half before that. It's not like the truth wasn't staring him in the mush all along. He is the original test subject in Al's bright new organizational idea - the head coach as shop foreman - and whatever objections he might have privately, he has kept them largely to himself.

And he will do so again today, because though the Raiders' job is smaller and less influential than any other job in the NFL, it is still a job, and Cable knows that.

What is more intriguing is why Al has chosen this moment to reinvent the job. True, much of the impetus for this radical rethink of the jobs has been his bad experiences with his other head coaches, and some of it surely is his Pavlovian impulse to control his team's environment with as few filters as possible.

Cable's attractiveness as a full-time head coach allegedly was linked to the way he got the Raiders to play so well and single-mindedly in the final two weeks of the year against Houston and Tampa Bay. Under normal circumstances, this would have won him some leeway in selecting his coaching staff, starting with his old colleague Scott Linehan as offensive coordinator.

Davis, though, was reinventing the job to the detriment of those who might hold it now or in the future. He hadn't allowed a coach complete control over the full staff, but for Cable, even that minimal prerogative was denied. He will announce that Ted Tollner will be the offensive coordinator and John Marshall the defensive coordinator, but those decisions also were made by Davis.

Al apparently has concluded that a lot of the last six years can be explained by bad staff work, and that the only way for him to be sure that the staff will meet his approval is for him to hire the staff.

Cable is apparently comfortable with that, or -more likely - in no position to object to it. Unless he has a bizarre desire to be an assistant coach in Kansas City if/when Todd Haley is hired, this is the only job left for him to have this year, and the restrictions are simply standard workplace conditions.

Can this work? Can anything work? Is this the way to bet? Of course not. The Raiders haven't had a lot of anything work over the past six, 14 or even 25 years. Indeed, if this were the way to run a modern football team, someone with a more contemporary industry view would have seized upon it before now.

Still, it will be great fun to listen to Al explain it, and for Cable to nod in agreement. This is, say what you will, a new way to run a railroad, and though it seems hilariously counterintuitive to do it this way, maybe it will work better than anyone can conceive.

Or, more likely, it doesn't matter whether it works or not as long as Al gets what he wants, which is more control over the football operation than he already had. That is to say, more than everything.

-- Al Davis today will name Tom Cable the 17th head coach in Raiders history, and fifth in seven years. D5

E-mail Ray Ratto at rratto@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle