NFL Week Eight: My Three Wishes

A Good Week For Mike Singletary

Am I alone in wondering why (a) it took so long for the Niners to get rid of Mike Nolan and (b) it took so long for someone to give Mike Singletary a shot at a head coaching job?

It seems that every time a franchise changed the top man, Singletary was one of the names in the frame. Yet he never got the role. Was it being too closely associated with a badly failing regime in San Francisco? Was it the personality of the man himself? 

We may never know. Yet I hope that both are true, because if anything is going to turn the 49ers around it is going to be someone who is not afraid to speak their mind.

No More Bounty Hunting

Are we seriously to believe that teams don't offer incentives to shut down certain players? Not to hurt them, just to prevent them having an impact on the game. It is such a well known motivational technique, you'd have to be an idiot to to think it doesn't go on.

On the other hand, offering an incentive to physically knock a player out of the game goes against everything football stands for. Players and coaches who indulge in this have no place in the modern game.

I don't for one moment believe that there was a bounty on the head of Hines Ward, less still that anyone would be dumb enough to talk about it if there was. Unless someone has some actual evidence, can we drop the harmful speculation, please.

A Dry Night In London

Sunday is the day the NFL returns to the town of my birth. The game has been less enthusiastically greeted than last season's was. This is partly because the participants are less well known on this side of the Atlantic, but partly because the spectacle of the Giants/Dolphins game was ruined by the inclement weather.

At the time of writing, it's going to be cold but dry. I'm hoping it stays that way, because London needs the best the NFL can offer if the game is going to take hold over here.