NAPA, Calif. — With his NFL head coaching life on the line, Tom Cable was stunningly oblivious here Tuesday.

Also in denial. Or rather, in non-denial denial.
That’s how it felt, anyway, when Cable answered the latest round of follow-up questions about the reported Aug. 5 altercation between Raiders coaches at training camp. I’m calling it the “Throwdown in Winetown.”
Cable couldn’t keep his own policy straight at his media session following Tuesday morning’s practice. A day earlier, he had repeated over and over that the incident was “an internal matter” and he would not be commenting on it.
But soon after, Cable made the incident a non-internal matter by going out and commenting. He told an ESPN reporter that the reports were “ridiculous” and “nothing happened.”
Cable repeated that last phrase Tuesday. It happened when someone asked him to clarify whether he had indeed punched or shoved assistant coach Randy Hanson, who went to the hospital for treatment of an injured jaw and has not been seen on the Raiders’ practice field lately.
“Nothing happened,” Cable repeated — but he would not elaborate and failed to precisely define “nothing.” Cable could have easily meant, “Nothing that I consider important” or “Nothing like the uppercut I was supposed to have thrown.”
I’ve been around coaches when they are doing deke moves. To me, this sounded like a classic word-parsing swerve. You know, sort of like: I did not have mandible relations with that coach, Mr. Hanson.
It’s why I could not escape another thought: This whole ridiculous episode, which did not need to become such a big deal, will eventually cost Cable his job.
Not because of the incident itself. You shouldn’t be horrified to learn this, but NFL coaches disagree and fight all the time behind closed doors. Maybe not to such a violent conclusion. But harsh words are said in coaches meetings. Stuff gets thrown.
The only reason we learned about this particular fight? Hanson went to the hospital for treatment — and when he informed doctors that the injury was the result of being punched, police notification was mandatory. Hanson refused to name his attacker, so no charges were filed.
It took until Monday for the general facts to leak out. But even so, the story could already be in the rearview mirror if the Raiders just had said exactly what happened and the guilty parties had owned up to being temporary idiots.
At that point, the NFL probably would have given the team and the coaches a slap on the wrist as punishment for violating the league’s personal-conduct standards. Neat, quick, done.
But that’s not how the Raiders roll. Ever. They love to obfuscate and extend. That’s why the NFL said it will “look into things” and possibly take some sort of punitive action.
What does Cable think about that? Good luck in getting an answer.
“Listen,” Cable told reporters who asked about the punch he did or didn’t throw, “if you want to talk about this football team and the players on this football team, I’ll talk all day. Otherwise, I’m not getting into it.”
See, this is where the oblivious part comes in: Cable does not seem to understand that what happened during the Throwdown in Winetown has absolutely everything to do with his football team. And with the men on his football team.
What counts in the NFL is how the team and players perform on game day. And a professional football player — any professional athlete, actually — wants one thing above all else: He wants to know that his coaches are working as hard as possible to help the player perform his best and win games.
So. When one of those players finds out that the staff members have other agendas and are throwing up their dukes at each other . . . well, that does not exactly prompt the players to believe the coaches are using their time wisely with a unified goal.
The rest of it — the jokes and the players chanting Cable’s name as a salute to his fists and all of that — are just part of the big NFL circus. The players get that. Robert Gallery, a Raiders offensive tackle, gets it.
“I have no idea what happened, if anything happened,” Gallery said of the coaching ruckus. “That’s for you guys to talk about. I worry about winning games.”
Right. So ponder this: If Cable is suspended for the season opener against San Diego, it could easily lead to a loss. That loss could lead to another lousy start for the team. And if the Raiders get off to a lousy start, the season could again go south quickly. If the Raiders go south quickly, Cable will lose his job.
And given his resume — this is only Cable’s fourth season in the NFL in any position — no other team in the league ever will hire him as a head coach.
So, yes, the way that Cable handles this incident in the next week or so will be very important. His hands might be tied by orders from above, in Al Davis’ bat cave. So? Tough pickles. Cable still has to figure out a way to handle it and get a grip on this and on his team. Otherwise, the team will no longer be his.