Day 2 of the Wrangle in Wine Country lost a little steam on a national level, thanks to Brett Favre's return to the NFL with the Minnesota Vikings. But reports that coach Tom Cable had punched out defensive assistant Randy Hanson and broke his jaw earlier this month at the Raiders' training camp facility would not go away.
Not when the Associated Press reported the NFL would investigate said reports.
Cable was in no mood to discuss such things in his daily media briefing Tuesday, following a joint morning practice with the 49ers.
"Listen," he said briskly when asked if he had been contacted by the league, "you want to talk about this football team and the players on this football team, I'll talk about it with you all day, otherwise I'm not getting into it."
Asked if he understood that the media had to ask the questions, Cable answered, "I respect that, but you have to respect the fact that I want to talk (about) my team."
His initial remarks to local media about the purported dust-up were that it was an "internal matter" and he would have no other comment. Yet, he later told ESPN's Mark Schlereth, a former teammate of Cable's at Idaho in the late 1980s, "nothing happened" between Cable and Hanson.
So, of course, Cable was reminded of his remarks to ESPN and asked again if anything had happened with Hanson.
"Nothing happened," he repeated.
Nothing, apparently, has happened with Hanson's job status, either, as Cable was asked if Hanson was still on his staff.
"Not gonna answer that," Cable said.
- This is the second consecutive year the 49ers have come up to Napa to join the Raiders for practice. This time, though, they are together for a pair of two-a-days. So what brought the NorCal rivals together again?
"Well, I was just a part of it last year for that one day and I think both teams felt like it was a great benefit," Cable said. "When Mike (Singletary) started talking about - Hey, let's add another day because it was so good and then it was over - we wanted to add the extra day, and like I said, I think they feel the same. We got a lot out of today."
- One major benefit of facing the 49ers is they run a 3-4 defense, the scheme favored most in the Raiders' division.
"I like it for a change-up," said left guard Robert Gallery. "You get used to going against the same guy every play. These guys are new guys, they have different moves, different type of player, so it's good just to hone your skills on a different type of animal. It's good for us.
"I think we play 8-10 games against 3-4 teams, so this is good work for us because it's a different animal, you got different rules and whatnot. But it's definitely going to be good work for us and good to see them this weekend in the exhibition game."
Gallery missed the start of camp due to an emergency appendectomy and has only been practicing since last week. The sixth-year pro is also used to controversy in Silver and Blackdom. So, he's deft at deflecting questions about it, as he did when asked if offensive line meetings ended in fisticuffs, what with the Cable-socking-up-Hanson rumors still swirling.
"Yeah, you know, we knock each other out once a night," Gallery joked. "No, it's crazy. I have no idea what happened, if anything happened. I could really care less."
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