The Oakland Raiders ended their relationship with coach Bill Callahan Tuesday, bringing an end to one of the most tumultuous two-year periods in the team’s rich history.
The team chose not to pick up the first of two option years on Callahan’s contract, a team official told the Mercury News. An announcement will be made Wednesday.
In Oakland, Callahan presided over one Super Bowl team and one that finished 4-12. From start to finish, his tenure was marked by incredible highs and franchise-shattering lows: a 4-0 start to his first season, a subsequent four-game losing streak, then a finishing kick that put the Raiders into Super Bowl XXXVII against Tampa Bay and former coach Jon Gruden.
The day before the Super Bowl, Pro Bowl center Barret Robbins went AWOL from the team and was suspended by Callahan. The next day, the Raiders lost 48-21 to the Buccaneers.
Year Two for Callahan was mostly negative. The team never regained its pre-Super Bowl form and limped to the finish line, losing 10 of its final 12 games. Along the way, 12 players went on injured reserve, linebacker Bill Romanowski punched out a tight end on the practice field, then suffered a season-ending string of concussions, and four players reportedly tested positive for the designer steroid THG.
The final indignity for the Raiders came in San Diego, before their season-closing game against the Chargers this past Sunday, when starting cornerback Charles Woodson and starting running back Charlie Garner missed curfew and were deactivated by Callahan. The move was met with hostility in some quarters of the locker room, and Woodson lashed out at Callahan a day later, saying he would never play for the coach again.
Veteran wide receiver Tim Brown also criticized the coach, saying Callahan “coached to get fired, and that’s what I think should happen to him.”
Quarterback Rich Gannon, who was the NFL’s MVP in 2002, defended Callahan the next day but also acknowledged that a changing of the coach was inevitable.
Callahan, the 13th coach in the team’s history, had a 15-17 regular-season record with the Raiders.