Mike Singletary Sends Mixed Messages in San Francisco's Tough Loss

(Photo by Genevieve Ross/Getty Images)

After the first loss of his coaching career, Mike Singletary was adamant that he knew what it would take to fix the 49ers.

"I want winners!" he bellowed, the first of many oft-quoted declarations he would make during his trial run as San Francisco's interim coach. 

A week later, after a close-but-no-cigar loss at Arizona on Monday Night Football, Singletary delivered another memorable quip—and presto!—"I'm not a moral victory kind of guy," appears next to his picture on billboards and on the sides of buses across the Bay Area.

Now, after the toughest loss of his young coaching career—a 27-24 heartbreaker at Minnesota—what frothy bit of inspiration would Singletary unleash upon the unsuspecting media? 

"You look at a game like today and it was a tough loss," he said.

Well, yeah, that's one way to sum up a back-and-forth affair that saw the ageless Brett Favre complete a 32-yard desperation heave to Greg Lewis at the back of the end zone with two seconds left, releasing the ball a moment before Manny Lawson leveled him and with Mark Roman covering Lewis as well as he possibly could be covered.

A bit underwhelming of a reaction, you might say.

Still, for a coach who told anyone who would listen that winning and only winning would satisfy him, losing in such a fashion would mean a fire and brimstone postgame speech to the players right?

Surely they would have to understand that this performance was not acceptable, right?

"It's already a positive," he said. "It's one of those things where you go through a season and you hope that it doesn't happen.

Already a positive? You hope that it doesn't happen?

Who is this impostor and what has he done with Mike Singletary?

He sounded an awful lot like a coach who was happy with a moral victory to me.

Maybe "Coach Sing" didn't rant and rave and give the media any juicy quotes because in losing a game he should've won on the road to Favre, Adrian Peterson, and the rest of the formidable Purple People Eaters, he realized that the team he's got is plenty good enough and talented enough that they no longer need to be berated or called out on the carpet.

Maybe he realized that his team has developed and matured to the point where all they need is to be coached on Sundays.

And maybe, just maybe, Singletary looked in the mirror and realized he let his guys down.

That he, above all, was the biggest reason they lost.

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