Davis finally cans Kiffin

"I just couldn't go on much longer with what I would call the propaganda, the lying that had been going on for weeks and months and a year and time," Davis said in his first news conference in nearly 14 months.

Kiffin had a 5-15 record since being hired last year, losing his final game 28-18 on Sunday to San Diego. Offensive line coach Tom Cable will take over on an interim basis. The team has a bye this week before Cable coaches his first game at New Orleans on Oct. 12.

The decision to remove Kiffin was more about his frequent criticisms of Davis' franchise as it was the team's performance on the field. Those critiques reached a peak when Kiffin distanced himself from the defense after a blowout loss in the season opener, saying that was under coordinator Rob Ryan and Davis' control.

But Davis also took shots at Kiffin's coaching ability, questioning his in-game strategies and several of his coaching and personnel decisions. Among other things, he said Kiffin objected to the Raiders using the first pick in the 2007 draft on quarterback JaMarcus Russell and insisted on Randy Moss being traded before last season.

The Raiders said Kiffin was fired for cause, meaning they will likely try not to pay him for the remainder of his contract. He signed a three-year deal worth about $6 million when he took over last year.

Kiffin's agent Gary Uberstine had no comment and said he advised his client not to hold a news conference on Wednesday. Kiffin instead will make his case directly to the commissioner in a grievance.

Kiffin told ESPN he was "embarrassed" for Davis while watching the news conference.

"It was very painful for myself and my family," he said. "A lot of accusations being made there, a lot of information being put up there, a number of lies. It was very hurtful and it was tough to stomach."

The 79-year-old Davis was front and center for more than 90 minutes, sharing the stage with Cable for some of that time and then sticking around afterward to take more questions. The once omnipresent owner rarely talks to the media anymore, last holding a news conference on Aug. 1, 2007, shortly after Bill Walsh died.

Davis is unable to attend practice as much as he did in the past and uses a walker to get around. But he dismissed questions about his health and said he still wants to win two more Super Bowl titles before handing the franchise over to his son, Mark.

"You're going to have to have me around for a while," he said.

Dressed in Raider silver-and-black, his face weathered by years of standing on football sidelines, Davis sat at a podium reading from notes illuminated by a large desk lamp. He seemed angry at times, blaming Kiffin for most of the Raider woes, though he also blamed himself for hiring him in the first place.

"I think he conned me like he conned all you people," Davis said.

The firing comes a day after the St. Louis Rams let go of Scott Linehan, marking the second firing at the quarter point of the season. The last time a coach had been fired this early in the season was when Davis got rid of Mike Shanahan after four games in 1989.

Cable is regarded as one of the top offensive line coaches in the game, and worked with successful units in Atlanta and Oakland. He spent four years as a college head coach at Idaho, and was also an assistant at UCLA, California and Colorado.

"This is in many ways a strange day," Cable said. "I have a friend who lost a job. That's difficult in this business but, as we know, this is a business. It is time for us to move forward and to put the past behind us. ... We have a good coaching staff here and a good football team here."

Kiffin's job security was in question as far back as January, when a dispute with Davis over whether he could replace Ryan as defensive coordinator led to a resignation letter being drafted for the coach. Kiffin refused to sign it and the feud went on throughout the offseason as Kiffin questioned big-money signings and other personnel moves made by Davis.

The situation grew more heated with Kiffin's comments on Davis' involvement with the defense two days after a season-opening 41-14 loss at home to Denver. Three days after that, reports surfaced that Davis was ready to fire his coach at any time and it dragged out from there.

That's when Davis said he gave Kiffin a letter, ordering him to stop making those types of public comments or risk being fired. Davis said he didn't want to fire Kiffin in the offseason or in training camp because he thought the situation was not yet untenable.

"I wanted to make it work, to be real honest," Davis said. "It's my belief that I would work and it could work. I wanted to make it work. Maybe I didn't want to admit that I'd made a mistake. And to be quite frank with you, I'm firing him for cause right now. I'm not firing him for anything else other than cause."

Kiffin did his best to deflect the controversy and never went to Davis to lobby for his job or a resolution. The team played much better the past three weeks, beating Kansas City and taking leads into the fourth quarter against Buffalo and San Diego before losing.

Davis' once-proud franchise has fallen on hard times of late, with the blame going beyond one coach. Oakland has an NFL-worst 20-64 record since the start of the 2003 season, a stretch spanning the tenures of Bill Callahan, Norv Turner, Art Shell and Kiffin.

Oakland has lost at least 11 games for five straight seasons, tying the dismal Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the 1980s for the worst stretch in NFL history.

Since returning to Oakland in 1995, the Raiders have had just three winning seasons and will be on their eighth head coach. The one constant during that period has been Davis, who won three Super Bowl titles in his first 21 years with the Raiders but has had little success over the past quarter-century.

Kiffin, the son of longtime NFL defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin, was just a 31-year-old assistant at Southern California when Davis hired him to replace Shell in 2007. With that, he became the youngest head coach in the NFL's modern era.

Davis said at the time that Kiffin's youth was not an issue, pointing to the success the Raiders had in the past with young coaches like John Madden and Jon Gruden.

Kiffin, instead, is following the path of Shanahan, who was hired at age 35 in 1988 and then fired four games into his second season. Until this move, Shanahan had been the only coach Davis had fired in the middle of a season since joining the Raiders in 1963.

Shanahan went on to win two Super Bowls with Denver.