San Francisco 49ers 2009 Preview

The 49ers entered 2008 a year after making a significant wave in the 2007 offseason, leading many to christen them as the team to watch that season.

Instead, the 2008 season unraveled at the seams, as the Niners would finish that year 5-11 leaving many fans to write them off again a year ago.

And for awhile, that seemed to be the appropriate thing to do.

J.T. O'Sullivan inherited the starting job at quarterback because in large part, he was one of few quarterbacks available on the open market with experience in new offensive coordinator Mike Martz's scheme. Alex Smith, the first overall pick of the 2005 Draft, was all but written off heading into camp and then a re-aggravation of a shoulder injury that knocked Smith out for much of the season before would wind up being the perfect excuse for Nolan (believed to not like him as a player) to shelf Smith for the rest of the season.

So with this disarray at the most important position of an offense, especially one as complex and dependent on the pass as Martz's, many people did not believe the Niners were much of a threat in the weak NFC West.

That prophecy seemed to be dead on, until the Niners dismissed head coach Mike Nolan in the middle of the season for assistant coach Mike Singletary. And with that coaching change, the entire culture of the 49ers seemed to change with it.

Following the first game Singletary would coach for the Niners—a 34-13 blowout loss at the hands of rival Seattle—the Niners would finish the second half of the season 5-3 behind new starting quarterback Shaun Hill, and had it not been for heart wrenching losses to Arizona and Miami, the Niners may very well have snuck in the back door of the postseason with a division championship.

The coaching change seemed to be exactly what the 49ers needed.

Singletary immediately got on the players that Mike Nolan didn't seem to ride hard enough—namely tight end Vernon Davis. He also demanded the team played more sound football and limit their mistakes, and with this philosophy, he clashed with offensive coordinator Mike Martz to a large degree.

But Singletary's philosophy worked. The results were seen in the second half of the season. It was Singletary that benched ineffective J.T. O'Sullivan mid-game against Seattle in favor of Shaun Hill, and Hill would throw for over 2000 yards and 13 touchdowns in the nine games (nine started) he played in. The most important thing Hill was able to do was protect the football. In the nine games Hill played in 2008—he only turned the ball over 10 times. In O'Sullivan's eight and a half games played in—he turned it over an astonishing 22 times.

Defensively, the Niners played much better after the coaching change as well—and after finishing 2007 ranked 22nd against both the run and pass, the Niners became a Top 10 unit against the run and the 13th best unit against the pass—and this number could have been much higher had the defense not played as poorly as it did at the start of the season when they surrendered 28 points or more in six of their first eight games.

Suddenly what seemed like a coaching change just to get to the end of the season, may have revealed itself as the beginning of a turnaround to a franchise that's been relatively meaningless to the football world this decade.

2009 Free Agency Additions:
DE Demetric Evans (Washington)
T Marvel Smith (Pittsburgh)
FB Moran Norris (Detroit)
WR Brandon Jones (Tennessee)
DE/LB Marques Harris (San Diego)
CB Dre Bly (Denver)
QB Damon Huard (Kansas City)

2009 Trade Acquisitions:

2009 Offseason Departures:
WR Bryant Johnson (Detroit)
TE Billy Bajema (St. Louis)
NT Ronald Fields (Denver)
OT Damane Duckett (New England)
CB Donald Strickland (NY Jets)
DE Tully Banta-Cain (New England)
FB David Kirtman (Seattle)
S Keith Lewis (Arizona)
QB JT O'Sullivan (Cincinnati)
TE Sean Ryan (Kansas City)

2009 NFL Draft:
1-10. Michael Crabtree, WR, Texas Tech
3-74. Glen Coffee, RB, Alabama
5-146. Scott McKillo

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