Mike Singletary Sells Out Alex Smith to the Bitter End

How great is it to be a starter on the 49ers?

No matter what you do, no matter how astronomical in scale your screw-ups are, you get to go to bed at night with that warm and fuzzy feeling in your belly knowing that come Monday morning, it's the quarterback that's gonna get reamed by your head coach, not you.

Michael Crabtree jogs through his routes and spreads a generous serving of "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" on his gloves?

It's the quarterback's fault.

The line lets pass rushers through like senior greeters at Walmart waving a friendly "hello" to shoppers on Black Friday?

It's the quarterback's fault.

The offensive coordinator calls a time-consuming power run to the right side on fourth-and-goal at San Diego's six-inch line instead of a simple QB sneak?

It's the quarterback's fault.

Your secondary gets strafed for three touchdown passes and allows San Diego's Philip Rivers to complete 76 percent of his passes while accumulating a 150.5 passer rating?

It's the quarterback's fault.

What a lovely thing, to be able to blame the faults of an entire organization on a single man, after spending all training camp insisting that the quarterback is no more important to an offense than a right guard. It really takes a special kind of genius to be able to pull that maneuver off with a straight face.

Understand that the stench the 49ers left at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium last Thursday was so pervasive, so overwhelming, that the big guy upstairs saw fit to flood the place in order to get rid of that nose-curling funk.

They were awful in every facet of the game, as they've been in several away games this season. Yet the same 21 of 22 schmoes will be starting at St. Louis next Sunday, with the only change coming at quarterback, where once again Troy Smith has been called on to save a season that Alex Smith has allegedly botched single-handedly.

Last Friday, in the postmortem of the Chargers' blowout, Singletary said after watching the film that Alex Smith did all that he could and that he was no more at fault than anyone else.

After mulling it over during the weekend, however, he apparently decided that was completely wrong and that the loss was entirely on Smith.

His statement on Thursday was the most publicly critical he's been of Alex Smith, and it's pretty obvious at this point that their relationship has gotten toxic.

"The most important thing for me coming into the season (was) to make sure I gave Alex every opportunity that I possibly could to succeed," Singletary said. "I did not impede that in any way. And it’s worked out the way it’s worked out, and you know, you can say yes, you’re disappointed, and you can say a lot of different things, but the bottom line is, it is what it is right now, and you move forward. But I know the information that I need to know."

Yes, he's given Alex Smith every opportunity he could to succeed and did not impede him in any way, unless you count little things like a number one receiver who can't be bothered to participate in training camp, a terrible offensive line with two rookies starting, and two offensive coordinators who don't have the freedom to call games that would actually take advantage of his strengths.

Forget the Chargers game. Singletary aired out Alex Smith in the locker room in front of the whole team after the opening loss of the season and it's been all downhill from there.

It's pretty much an open secret that Singletary never wanted to bench Troy Smith in the first place, but that he was cajoled into it by his offensive coaches, particularly offensive coordinator Mike Johnson, who had to beg and plead to convince his boss that it's too hard to win with half a game plan, which was essentially what he was calling with Troy Smith under center.

A safe hypothesis is that Singletary made it clear to Johnson that Alex Smith would be on a very short leash and that his preference was to stick with Troy Smith.

Alex Smith had his best game of the season against the Seahawks and actually threw a touchdown pass to Vernon Davis on his very first drive, so Singletary had no cause to pull him.

Four days later, facing the top pass defense in football in the Chargers, in a situation where the road team is always at a tremendous disadvantage on short weeks, Alex Smith played badly (66.0 passer rating), but really no worse than Troy Smith had in his last three starts (ratings of 51.5, 61.7 and 64.4).

Singletary told Johnson that Troy Smith will be starting this week—it wasn't up for debate—and to formulate a game plan that would be "conducive" for both quarterbacks' strengths in case he has to pull Troy Smith for Alex Smith.

That he doesn't understand, even to this day, that the two Smiths are completely different and require completely different plays to perform at their best is as frightening as it is totally par for the course with Singletary, who came to the job with a layman's understanding of offensive football in general and the quarterback position in particular, and has stubbornly refused to learn a thing over three seasons.

What he's asking from Johnson is to either devise half a game plan for each or one twice as long as the norm, and either way it's doing the offense a disservice and spreading Johnson thin.

By now there isn't a player in the locker room who hasn't realized that their head coach is in over his head and desperately grasping at thin air, like a man falling off a cliff. Singletary is someone who would proudly wear a "2010 NFC West Champions" T-shirt, clueless to the fact that it came with a 7-9 record in the worst division in the history of football.

At this point a mercy killing is in order. The 49ers have to lose on Sunday just to make sure no one in their boardroom even entertains the thought of giving Singletary a reprieve because of a fluke playoff appearance.

They need to lose so this wretched team doesn't draft 21st in every round instead of in the top ten, where they deserve to be.

With Troy Smith starting, Singletary has almost assuredly signed his own pink slip, so it's fitting in a way for his final decision to be the one that does him in.

The 49ers have been awful in 10 a.m. PT road games all year and it won't change on Sunday. They're gonna go down and that will be that.

The team will begin their search for a new coach in earnest. They will move forward. With Singletary, we know the information that we need to know.