Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Singletary

Last night, I decided to watch the San Francisco 49ers take on the Arizona Cardinals. It was a pretty good game but I wanted to watch the game for two reasons. One was for stupid fantasy football reasons but the other was I wanted to see first hand what difference, if any, Mike Singletary was having on this lackluster football team. During my observation I had a few other thoughts as well.

I have no doubt that the 49ers were somewhat responding to their new coach. They played pretty hard. Let's be real about one thing though. This team has two wanna be QBs (3 if you count Alex Smith). QB play is everything in this league. It separates winners from losers. Talent wise this SF team is no worse than your average NFL team but they lose like some of the worst teams in the league. JT O' Sullivan and Shawn Hill are too inconsistent and too turnover prone to be legit QBs. Look at what the Atlanta Falcons have done in one year with Matt Ryan. The Falcons cleaned house last year. They made two key additions to that team. They got themselves a legit RB and a star in the making at QB. Other than that they really deducted some talent from this roster. But rebuilding the 49ers is not my point here. Just stating a flaw that needs to be addressed.

My point is that Singletary's management skills, or lack there of, can't be disguised. Not when you cost your team a chance to win. Then he throws Martz (offensive coordiantor) under the bus in his press conference by saying he called the play. That made me angry. He is the head coach. Own up to it publically. Yell at Martz in the office but not in the press. When you are preaching "loyalty" and saying you want to keep the locker room "scared" you can't do that.

Singletary's tactics are quickly becoming old. He is using motivational tactics that work in the college game but not in the pros. He is treating this team like kids and NFL players don't usually respond to such tactics. He gets the benefit of being a well respected hard nosed former player. But that honeymoon period is quickly coming to an end. When you do those things and you still lose, players don't want to hear that stuff. Players start thinking "yeah, yeah, blah blah". It also shows what happens when an untested position coach moves all the way up to head coach. It's a different world being THE MAN. Singletary is proving he isn't ready to be there. He is not only losing the goodwill of this team but he may be on his way to losing a chance to coach on any team, even as a positional coach. He had better wake up but I think it's already too late. This team will quit on him at the first sign of trouble.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I stayed up watching this whole thing as a NINER fan of course I never get to see them anyway so...

Singletary is good and bad for this team, I don't know what to think. Throwing your coordinator under the bus is bad enough, but calling that horrible play at the end....UUHHH!!!! How about giving the ball to the best player on that offense, Frank Gore, not lining him up at WR. Michael Robinson, are you serious? It pains me to see this happen, it really could have been a turning point in the season. Now it's just another reason to count us out for years to come.

Vernon Davis is a punk. The guy makes one brilliant catch and gets penalized for it, then Mike hugs it out after it's over, WTF? Last week you castrate the guy for the same nonsense, what gives here?

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