49ers: Nice win for the team and Singletary as Singletary was officially named head coach after the game. It was a good win because it seems that the decision to hire Singletary had been made earlier in the week and the rumors of such provided a good deal of distraction from a meaningless week 17 game. We’ll have plenty of time to discuss the future direction of this team, so I’ll stick with what I saw yesterday. The offensive line was playing hard and opening holes. DeShaun Foster doesn’t seem to run very hard for a big back (Carolina fans nod in agreement) even though he had a decent game. Shaun Hill was off in the first half after the initial drive, although that drive was mostly running plays. The defense held Portis to minimal gains after his first score, but had trouble containing Santana Moss. The Redskins were picking on Walt Harris and he should probably move to nickel back next season. Mark Roman continues to disappoint. Two full seasons without creating a turnover is unacceptable for a free safety. Bryant Johnson has played well the last couple games since he’s been healthy, but not better than either Jason Hill or Josh Morgan. Justin Smith did everything, pressured Jason Campbell, played the run well and tipped a pass or two. The 49ers have defended TEs well all year, but Chris Cooley had a pretty good game. You have to love the 1:30 drill Hill ran at the end of the game to set up the winning FG. The 49ers are the only team to score more than 25 points against the Redskins all season.

Raiders: Huge win for the Raiders and for the Eagles. Tampa’s defense has fallen off of late, coinciding with D-Coor Monte Kiffin announcing he was leaving after the season to join his son’s staff at Tennessee. Michael Bush made the case that he is a running back and not a full back. Johnnie Lee Higgins might be something. I don’t think he’s a top tier guy, at all, but he’s got speed and moves and that’s always dangerous. I don’t know if Cable is the guy for the head coaching job. Al Davis complicates things because he runs his franchise like no other owner, but Oakland showed yesterday that they are closer to competing than we were led to believe at the beginning of the season.
Sharks: The Sharks have problems with the Blues. I’m not sure why, it’s probably just one of those things like why Luther Head only goes buck wild against the Warriors. Nabby had a great game against the Blues, but I think they ran out of gas in the OT. The Sharks were very active at the end of the third, but looked a little slow in overtime. When the game went to a shootout, the Sharks didn’t look comfortable. The game was on the road and the Sharks still earned a point, so it’s not all bad. Tonight they play another team they’ve struggled against in the past, the Dallas Stars. It’s a tough stretch for the Sharks as they go to Minnesota after Dallas, come home for a game versus the Islanders then back to the road versus Calgary and Edmonton.

Warriors: They beat the World Champion Boston Celtics!! It’s all turning around!! It’s going to be okay!!! Nope. The Warriors caught the Celts after a back to back at the end of a road trip. It was still a good win, no doubt, but it’s going to be just a flash in the pan. Toronto visits tonight before the Warriors hit the road again and will have played 7 of 9 on the road. Just read Kawakami’s blog saying StackJack talked to Baron and Baron wants to come back. Too late. The Warriors are already screwed and it’ll probably cost Bellinelli, Randolph or Wright to get rid one of their other bad contracts. Worst of all, it won’t help in the win column at all.

Giants: They singed Randy Johnson to a one year deal. Good move. I hope he’s a good mentor to Cain and Lincecum. He’s only five wins shy of 300, so that’ll be a nice milestone to celebrate. Any excuse to party, right?

A's: Nothing to report. I would write about something if there was something, you have to believe me.

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Coach Singletary had his weekly press conference yesterday and reading over the transcript you can see why players respond to him. From Dan Brown's Hot Read blog:

Q: What did you think was going on? Did you have an idea of what was going on in your mind?

“Sometimes when you get in a situation, you’re just not playing well, you just aren’t playing in sync and as a coach, you can be on the sideline but you can’t feel it and I think you have to be in that huddle to see it and feel it and once you are on that sideline, no one can convey it better than the quarterback, no one can. So I said what I had to say and got the heck out of the way and let him[Hill] take it and let him direct them, the only way the quarterback can do it and let it take place.”

I think this quote outlines what a former player can bring to the head coach position. Singletary knows what it's like on the field and he knows as a coach he doesn't have the same feel for the game anymore. He knows who the leader on the field is, the quarterback. I can't say if Nolan feels the same, but I know that the Nolan-Smith rift was very damaging to the overall success of the team. Singletary hasn't treated his QBs with kid gloves, either. He benched JTO after less than a half and came close to benching Shaun Hill last game. Singletary's feel for the game is much better than Nolan's was and his instincts are paying dividends.

Q: Do you respect him more because he said, ‘Keep me in here,’ than if he had just listened to you and said, ‘Okay, I had a bad day…’

“Body language tells you a lot and I don’t really, it’s not so much, it really doesn’t matter what a guy says, I mean, everything is in a guy’s eyes. Everything is in his posture when he comes off the sidelines and when you look at a player, whether it’s a corner that just got beat for a touchdown, he comes off and he’s grabbing his ham[string], well is his ham[string] hurt or is his heart hurt? Is his confidence hurt? So when I looked at him and he said what he said, everything was there that said, ‘I really can get this done. You can trust me to go back out there and get this done.’ And that is what the body language said and I said, ‘You know what, okay, fine, you got it,’ and I told Coach Martz he’s going back in and let’s go with it.”

Singletary assessed his QBs body language and made the decision to stick with him the same way he made decisions when he was playing linebacker for the Bears. Singletary is read and react coaching and it's working. The last sentence from the quote above says a lot, too.

"...I told Coach Martz he’s going back in and let’s go with it."

There is no mistaking who is calling the shots on this team. Mike Singletary has a Hall of Fame background in defense, but he's not ignorant of the offense. He knows this is his team and he's going to run it as such. Martz may be his offensive coordinator, but Singletary will make the final call. Players respond to him. Fans respond to him. Even reporters respond to him. If Singletary wins on Sunday, he'll be the first 49ers head coach with a winning record since Mariucci in 2002. I mentioned it yesterday, but it would also move Singletqary to 3-1 after December 1st. Even Nolan, who had a reputation of winning some meaningless games late in the season, never won more than 2 games after December 1st.

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49ers:Christmas came early for the 49ers. For three quarters, Shaun Hill was feeling the Christmas Spirit and giving the ball away. Hill was almost rewarded for his generosity with a benching, but he promised the coach he still had more to give. He rallied the team and found his stride. He turned a forgetful homecoming for Isaac Bruce into a magnificent multiple milestone memory. Hill connected with Isaac Bruce for a touchdown to bring the 49ers within six points of the Rams with 4:06 left in the game. It was Bruce's 1000th career catch, the fifth player in NFL history to reach the 1000 catch mark. The defense seemed energized, even though they had been on the field almost twice as long as their counterparts. After two Steven Jackson runs, the Rams faced a 3rd and five. Bulger tried to find Holt on a quick out, but Nate Clements made a great play to knock the ball down. The 49ers needed to go 67 yards in 2:27 to pull out the victory. On first down, Hill is sacked by Pisa Tinoisamoa, two minute warning. The 49ers need 76 yards to win. After a Ram neutral zone infraction penalty, Hill hits Bruce for eight yards moving Bruce into second all time in receiving yards. Yes, second all time. Although he's 8,000 yards behind Jerry Rice. Hill finds Bryant Johnson for a first down and then The Play. Shaun Hill heaved the pass from the St. Louis 48 yard line and I didn't know what to expect. His earlier deep passes were ugly and poorly thrown and often intercepted. This pass was as ugly as any Shaun Hill deep ball, but well placed and Josh Morgan made a great leaping catch in front of teammate Jason Hill. Touchdown, Niners??? Wow.

You can say what you want about December victories for teams not going anywhere. After all, Nolan had a habit of performing well(for him) when the games didn't matter anymore. This game meant a whole lot. For one thing, this was a game that the 49ers were expected to win, on the road. Walt Harris summed it up:

If we would have lost, it would have been a big step back.

An ugly win? Yes. Did Mike Nolan have similar December wins? Yes. Is there a difference? Yes. Nolan was 2-3 in each December as head coach and his best December was, ironically, in 2005, his first season when the team gave up only 21.5 points a game. Singletary's teams is giving up only 14.5 points a game in December and under 10 points if you go back one game into November. On the season, the 2008 Singletarys are giving up 10 points a game less than the 2008 Nolans. That's not counting the Seattle game against either coach the week Nolan was out and Singletary was in. Maybe it's as simple as how Singletary speaks that makes me feel this is different. When Singletary speaks, his words make sense and what he says is beliveable. The fact is, if the Niners beat a Washington team at home who has nothing to play for, Singletary will be 3-1 in December and Nolan never did that.

Sharks: Sure, the 6-0 drubbing from the Champion Red Wings last week wasn't pretty. You don't want to lose like that to a team you may have to meet in the playoffs. You don't want to lose any mental edges and a 6-0 thrashing is unnerving. However, it was on the road, the second night if a back to back after losing the night before in overtime. The Sharks have some injuries and they weren't going to keep up "Best Start In History" pace the whole season, so a blip or two is to be expected. They came home and beat the Atlantic leading New York Rangers on Saturday and get a restful Christmas week at home.

Warriors: I can't watch this team right now. It's too depressing. Great, they beat the Bobcats. Jamal Crawford scored 50 points. Yay. Crawford and Turiaf tied with a team high 5 assists a piece. The Warriors only had 18 assists as a team, with Crawford and Turiaf accounting for 10 of them. That's abysmal. The Warriors need a distributor and have a bunch of bad contracts so they will have to overpay someone to get a "real" point guard and give up Wright or Randolph or both on top of it. It's funny how life works, especially for Warriors fans.

Raiders: Wish I could write about how the Raiders looked, but the game was blacked out.

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Mike Singletary isn’t one to mince words. He speaks his mind and, because of that, we can read between the lines when he talks about his employment in the near future. Mike Nolan had the opposite approach, spewing numerous empty statements consisting of political vagaries. Because Singletary is a straight shooter, we can take what he says and read between the lines with more assurance. The NFL has the Rooney Rule, which requires teams to interview at least one minority candidate for their head coaching position. This rule also forbids teams from promoting interim head coaches during the season, even if the interim coach is a minority. After the season, the 49ers will have a window of possibly two weeks to exclusively negotiate with Singletary. I think Singletary will be the head coach of the 49ers for the next few years barring a couple highly unlikely scenarios.
First, let’s look at what Singletary said this week. The media had all but assumed that Singletary would have locked up the head coaching position with a win last week in Miami. Although the team didn’t come away with a win, the team played well without Frank Gore, and the most talked about subject at Singletary’s press conference was the interim coach’s future. After 3+ years of Nolan-ese, the media was skeptical of Singletary because he was thought to be too much like his predecessor. Instead, Singletary offers a refreshing honesty compared to the robotic calculations provided by Nolan.

"OK, I’m going to say this one more time. And I’m sure I’ll say it again. I am not trying to impress the Yorks. When I’m coaching, I’m not thinking about the Yorks. I’m not thinking that the Yorks are looking at me and hoping, ‘Well, I hope they saw that!’ I don’t really care about that."

This speaks to Singletary’s confidence. He knows the players are behind him. He knows there will be an opportunity next year for him, and if the 49ers don’t step up, someone else will. When asked if he would go through an interview process among multiple candidates after the season with San Francisco Singletary was hesitant to answer the question but he eventually accepted the reality that an interview process may be required to obtain the job.

“Q: If there is an interview process—with multiple candidates—would you participate?
SINGLETARY: Uh, I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s a very good question. I don’t know. I can’t give you an answer to that question right now.
Q: Why wouldn’t you go through an interview process?
SINGLETARY: Umm, OK. Yes. I will go through an interview process.
Q: You’re a competitive guy…
SINGLETARY: I am a competitive guy, OK? The competition, when you talk about competitive, I’m competitive in anything I do. But I’ll just say this: If there’s an interview, I’d probably go through the interview process.”

Singletary is posturing now. His stock is high and he’s doing what he can to increase his value come contract time. I listened to him on KNBR Tuesday morning and Singletary again answered questions about his future. When speaking about the spirit of the team, Singletary said the players are “excited to be part of something special, and they feel it on the horizon.” Singletary goes on to say he “doesn’t get involved with thinking about that” when talking about permanent job status. He says he has an agent and he lets him take care of it.

“I told my agent…I hired you to do your job, and you go ahead and do what you need to do. He has had some conversations…[and] at the appropriate time he can buzz me in on everything that’s happening when I need to know.”

That tells me, Singletary has gone over his requirements with his agent and his agent has talked to ownership about Singletary’s necessities and a deal will be done within that two week window.

There are a couple of outs that could change this direction, but both would require big investments from ownership. One is to check on the price and availability of Bill Cowher. It’s delicate because you don’t want to spurn Singletary or his agent by putting feelers out just to see about Cowher. The team could wind up with neither. The other out would be to bring in Scott Pioli from New England as team president. That would be a major shake up. He’d be expensive and want control over a lot of particulars including GM and head coach. The best option for the 49ers seems to be Singletary because he’ll be relatively cheap as a first time head coach, the players and coaches respond to him and the fans like him. Singletary has positioned himself to be the next 49ers head coach the old fashioned way, on the field, with results. I haven’t seen, read or heard anything from 49ers brass to indicate that Mike Singletary won’t be patrolling the sidelines at Candlestick next season as head coach.

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