Time is right for termination
Do you think the Niners learned a thing or two by the whole
silver and black debacle surrounding the Oakland Raiders a couple
of weeks ago?
On Monday, it was reported by a handful of Web sites that 49ers
head coach Mike Nolan was going to be fired following the team’s
game against Seattle this Sunday. It would have kicked off the
Niners’ bye week with a bang, and would have been the
”
perfect
”
time to fire Nolan mid-season.
Time is right for termination
Do you think the Niners learned a thing or two by the whole silver and black debacle surrounding the Oakland Raiders a couple of weeks ago?
On Monday, it was reported by a handful of Web sites that 49ers head coach Mike Nolan was going to be fired following the team’s game against Seattle this Sunday. It would have kicked off the Niners’ bye week with a bang, and would have been the “perfect” time to fire Nolan mid-season.
A few hours later on Monday, though, Nolan was officially let loose.
Analysts barely had enough time to analyze, speculators barely enough time to speculate. Thanks for nothing, York!
Whether or not the leaked story sped up the process – it was merely a matter of time before Nolan got the heave-ho anyway – remains to be seen, but it seems the Niners didn’t want a similar three-ring circus surrounding their head coach, much like the Raiders had with terrifying clowns, dancing bears and a bearded lady.
The relationship between Lane Kiffin and the Oakland brass was like a bad carton of milk in a frat house fridge; it gradually began to get worse by the day, smell worse by the day, but no one decided to ever take it out of the refrigerator until it was too late.
Before someone inside the Niners organization was even able to leak a story on a daily basis – much like how it evolved within the Raiders organization – San Francisco simply ridded themselves of the subject of those leaks – much to the disappointment of sports writers everywhere.
They did what they were going to do anyway, but perhaps sooner than they wanted to actually do it. Considering Nolan held his usual press conference with the media in Santa Clara on Monday, hours before his firing, and it becomes even clearer that the Niners were forced to jump the gun a bit.
With that said, it was the best time to let go of Nolan this season. I know everyone had money on the bye week in the “Fire Nolan” office pool, but it’s the truth.
During the last couple of weeks, in a timeframe that has seen the Niners lose four straight games, talk shows, blogs and columnists discussed not if Nolan would get canned, but when.
It became a raging debate.
Just when, exactly, is the best time to fire a head football coach?
Head football coaches everywhere would answer never, but many fans and critics believed it was the bye week, which is now just a few short days away for San Francisco.
The bye week would have given the incoming skipper more than three days of practice with the team, and it would ease him into the head role without his head exploding … we would hope.
But the Niners promoted from within, giving the reigns to assistant head coach Mike Singletary, the Hall of Fame linebacker of the Chicago Bears and Nolan’s right-hand man of the last four years.
This is Singletary’s first head coaching job, which should raise an eyebrow or two about the timing, considering Singletary would probably revel in the fact of having an additional week of preparation.
But really, the leak couldn’t have come sooner. If the Niners hadn’t fired Nolan on Monday, rumors and reports would have swirled above Candlestick all week and only distracted a 49ers team that is supposed to beat Seattle this weekend.
And with Nolan at the helm, who knows what would have happened. San Francisco has been getting worse by the week, smelling worse by the week, and a loss to the Seahawks would have officially ended this season, before we could even get to the bye week just to fire Nolan.
This wasn’t the greatest timing – the beginning of the season would have been better – but it’s not necessarily the worst.
The NFC West is completely up for grabs right now, probably because the Arizona Cardinals are in the drivers seat. A win for the Niners Sunday will send them and their new coach into the bye week with plenty of momentum, just the kind of momentum needed to beat Arizona after the bye.
Nolan was not the man for the 49ers, so why wait one more game, perhaps even one more crucial loss, just to fire him? It might be doing a disservice to Singletary, but with Mike Martz calling the offense and Greg Manusky running the defense, all the Niners may need is a spark.
“Right now, the guys realize that we do have something here,” Singletary said. “To what degree, I don’t know, but we do have something special here. It’s a matter of stepping in and being able to bring it together, and that’s something I’ve done all my life.”
