Those of you who regularly read my work know that I try to start all of these with a quote that I'll make relevant in some sort of lesson later on.
I'll be darned if I couldn't find one that properly dealt with what I wanted to talk about today: false hope.
Whose fault is that? Surely great cynics like Twain have left lines about it somewhere, although after going through every quotation page the Internet could find for me, I was only able to gather a handful; none of them were particularly suitable.
What does that say, not just about Google and my research ethic, but about us? Are we so endeared to hope that we cannot accept it when hope is no longer a possibility? Or are we so consumed by romantic thoughts of days long gone that we will ignore reality in favor of an idealized present, where the past is celebrated even if it no longer functions correctly?
Enter the Mike Singletary press conference.
We've all seen it by now, and I'm sure everybody has formed their own opinions of it. Just going around, reading columns, blogs, and even other articles here has shown me that the general consensus is that this is great. It's exactly what was needed, and this team is now on the right path.
Allow me to burst your bubble.
Yes, this team needed a drastic shift in coaching philosophy.
Yes, Mike Singletary is from a whole other galaxy—no—whole other universe than Mike Nolan.
The problem is that there are certain questions we are ignoring.
Why was this team so ill prepared before Nolan was fired? Singletary was the assistant head coach and linebackers coach. Not only did the defense as a whole look bad, but the linebackers frequently blew coverages that were incredibly simple in the stripped down Nolan playbook.
Why wait until now to be fiery? Nolan clearly wasn't the authority figure anyway, so why wait for him to get fired before you scream about players and attitude? I assure you that if Tampa Bay had played as poorly on defense as the 49ers, Jon Gruden wouldn't be the only person yelling. The same for the Houston Texans, whose assistant coach/defensive backs coach Ray Rhodes would surely be using his vocal chords to his advantage.
The real issue though isn't that Singletary waited for a big stage to go ballistic, it's that it doesn't exactly work in the NFL anymore.
Screaming and yelling can motivate a college team, or a young professional team, because it's based off of fear.
NFL salaries have all but taken that aspect away.
If you made the kind of money that Vernon Davis made (or Plaxico Burris, or Terrell Owens, or Adam Jones, or Matt Jones, or Santonio Holmes or any of these other scum), would you really care that coach sent you off the field to shower?
Yeah, me neither.
Yes, not every NFL player is making money to be set for life, but show me a player who frequently runs into attitude or authority issues who isn't a multi-gazillionaire.
Don't worry sports fans, I won't hold my breath.
Look, in a societal vacuum, I'm all for this style of coaching.
Fear the authority, because it will bite you.
Play the game because you love it, and you want to win. It's why any of us would.
Realistically, it's going to get tuned out.
Besides, bringing passion can only get you so far. So, here's the question for Coach Singletary.
Mike, if you couldn't even get your linebackers ready to play a game, how are you going to prepare an entire team?
Ray Bogusz can normally be reached via email but he wouldn't bank on getting back to you because Y! mail has started to randomly delete letters and only deliver when it feels like it. You'd be safer to drop him a comment or a note on his B/R user profile.
And for the record, he loves what Singletary said.
We're going to send you the most entertaining San Francisco 49ers articles, videos, and podcasts from around the web.
26 Comments
Loading more comments...
This comment and all replies have been deleted This comment has been deleted Undo delete