Three weeks ago, Al Davis won an arbitration case against former Oakland Raiders coach Lane Kiffin when it was ruled that the Raiders did not have to pay the remaining portion of Kiffin's salary.
Monday afternoon, the Raiders' AFC West rival Denver Broncos fired coach Josh McDaniels with two years and $7 million still left on McDaniels' contract.
There is no way these two totally separate events could be somehow related, right?
Maybe they are. Since the ruling in Mr. Davis' favor, it may become a hot new trend among NFL owners to fire a coach "for cause," and then not pay that ex-coach the rest of the money still owed on his contract.
The Raiders tested the waters, and now the Broncos may be jumping in.
ESPN's Chris Mortenson reports that the Broncos are preparing a case to attempt exactly what Davis just did to Lane Kiffin, claiming they fired McDaniels "for cause" over the Spygate II incident in which Broncos staff illegally videotaped San Francisco 49ers practices.
"Since the videotaping incident," the ESPN says, "the team has researched whether it could do just that and fire McDaniels "for cause" and avoid paying him the balance of his contract."
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A subsequent report Tuesday morning in the Denver Post, however, asserts that McDaniels claims he will be paid the remainder of his contract.
Plenty of people, like for instance me, laughed at Al Davis when he fired Lane Kiffin with an overhead projector and said Kiffin was "a flat-out liar".
But Davis may have the last laugh. His method of deposing Lane Kiffin could get flat-out copied by other teams in the league.
Joe Kukura is a freelance who hopes McDaniels gets paid, just so that next season the Broncos would be paying three coaches while retaining the services of only one.
