From the creator of StarBust Football, Inc.
The San Francisco 49ers decided to fire head coach Mike Singletary following the team’s week fifteen loss that officially ended their chances at winning the NFC West crown. While Singletary has been on the hot seat for much of the season, canning their head man with just one game left this season exudes indecisiveness from the Niners’ front office.
Singletary has made plenty of bonehead decisions during his reign in San Francisco, including a nauseating quarterback carousel this season, that left the 49ers’ offense in a tough spot with seemingly constant change at the position. Despite that, team CEO Jed York contends that he was most upset with the team laying an egg during a “playoff caliber game” against St. Louis in week sixteen, which he claims ultimately forced his hand to get rid of the head coach.
As far as I, or anyone else should be concerned, “playoff caliber games” feature good teams with winning records, which is far from what Sunday’s St. Louis-San Francisco tilt brought to the table. The 49ers have been far from a playoff caliber team all season. They started the season 0-5 and then lost to the horrid Carolina Panthers, in week seven, to fall to 1-6. Sure they were still “mathematically” in the playoff chase, but did anyone really expect San Francisco to end up winning the division with a Troy Smith-Alex Smith QB duo, especially after losing RB Fred Gore for the season?
Let’s face it, winning the NFC West with a sub-.500 record is far from a solid accomplishment. After an 8-8 season in 2009, expectations were high for the 49ers in 2010, but the squad has underachieved the entire year, and currently sits at 5-10. York may not realize this, but even if they had made the playoffs, it would’ve been on the coattails of an abysmal regular season, which presumably would’ve led to a coaching change anyway.
You would think that if they were so displeased with Singletary to fire him at midseason, they would’ve gotten rid of him much earlier, rather than at this juncture. The point here is that if Singletary was to be fired, it should have occurred either much earlier in the season. Ousting the guy with just one game remaining is senseless and proves very little. York neither stuck with his head coach through the duration of the season, nor did he make a difference in the 49ers’ season with a timely, midseason firing.
The firing does, however, demonstrate a lack of ability by York and the front office to accurately and honestly assess the team’s playoff chances, and more importantly their coaching situation. York stuck with Singletary through fifteen weeks of this terrible season, so to fire him with one game remaining is more of an admission of guilt and incompetency, on his part, declaring that Singletary should have been gone much earlier. York’s handling of the Singletary situation proved that he is disloyal, indecisive, and generally incapable of aiding his team to future success.
