Seahawks hire Cable, fire Bates

NFL: Tom Cable is headed home. Jeremy Bates is looking for a new one.

Leave it to Pete Carroll to keep things interesting around Seattle Seahawks headquarters just two days after their season ended.

Carroll and the Seahawks fired Bates, the team’s offensive coordinator, on Tuesday morning, ending a rocky one-year return to the NFL for Bates during which the Seahawks ranked among the worst offenses in the NFL.

By the afternoon, Carroll was bringing coaches on board. He hired Cable, bringing the Pacific Northwest native and former college head coach at Idaho back home after nearly three years as Raiders head coach. Cable was not retained by Al Davis at the end of the 2010 season.

Seattle announced that Todd Wash would become the defensive line coach, leaving behind the same position with Tampa Bay.

Cable (pictured above) returns to focusing on the offensive line after spending parts of three seasons as head coach of the Raiders, where he went 17-27. Players credited Cable with helping make the team a contender in the AFC West this season.

But Cable’s relationship with Davis was not good and the owner decided not to exercise a two-year, $5 million option to keep him. Cable filed a grievance against the Raiders to recover $120,000 in fines that Davis withheld from Cable’s paychecks in his last season.

Now Cable’s focus is improving an offensive line that was a major problem for Bates to deal with all season.

Associated Press

Mariners sign three pitchers

Baseball: The Seattle Mariners reached one-year deals with three pitchers, avoiding arbitration with closer David Aardsma, reliever Brandon League and left-hander Jason Vargas.

The deals left the M’s with their entire roster under contract for the 2011 season.

Associated Press

SI casts doubt on Armstrong

Cycling: A story in Sports Illustrated challenges Lance Armstrong’s statements that he cut ties to a controversial Italian doctor and training adviser who has long been accused of helping cyclists cheat.

In a report posted Tuesday on its website, the magazine previewed a longer investigative piece that will appear in this week’s issue, available today.

Without naming its source, SI says that when Italian authorities raided the home of Armstrong teammate Yaroslav Popovych last November in Italy, they found texts and e-mails linking the Radio Shack team with Dr. Michele Ferrari as recently as 2009.

Associated Press