Posts tagged AlexSmith at FanHouse

On Wednesday, Gretz mentioned that the 49ers were giving Mike Singletary an early Christmas gift: the head coaching gig for next season.

The club canned Mike Nolan after a 2-5 start, but the team has been 5-4 since. And next year, Singletary will have the pleasure of trying to win football games without offensive coordinator Mike Martz sabotaging everything. This comes as shocking news to, well, nobody, really. Not even J.T. O'Sullivan.

With Martz one-and-done in San Francisco, who should take over the play-calling duties? The San Francisco Chronicle's Gwen Knapp has a suggestion:

If, however, [Norv] Turner is available and Singletary is interested, nothing should get in their way. When Turner left San Francisco two years ago, he put the 49ers in a terrible position. The 49ers had already responded to the Cowboys' interest in Turner by promising to pay him a salary commensurate with his status as the coordinator who had given the breath of life to a moribund offense. Then San Diego came along with a late offer, and Turner went, taking the 49ers' future with him.

For all the knocks on Turner the head coach, he's the anti-Ron when it comes to coordinating up an offense. Norv had a lot to do with Alex Smith's progress in 2006, and before that, he was a coordinator for the Dolphins, Chargers and Cowboys. And in virtually every stop, he was successful. There's no reason to think he wouldn't be able to revitalize the 49ers' moribund offense, particularly if you think Shaun Hill is a more viable option than Smith.

Of course, there's the little issue of Turner still having a job.

Back in training camp, the San Francisco 49ers made the rather curious decision to name J.T. O'Sullivan their starting quarterback despite the fact he had never really done anything in the NFL to warrant such a position. It raised a few eyebrows because they not only had a former No. 1 overall pick on the roster (Alex Smith), but also because Shaun Hill played well in his limited action a season ago. And while three games when the team had nothing to play for isn't exactly a large sampling of data to examine, it's still more than O'Sullivan had accomplished in his career.

Nonetheless, the 49ers gave the job to O'Sullivan, and for a couple of games, it looked like it wasn't going to completely backfire on them. Mike Martz was delirious in his praise of the journeyman signal-caller, while the team won two of its first three games. Then, all of a sudden, O'Sullivan started to play like a guy who had played for eight teams in six years, turning the ball over at an alarming rate, while the 49ers dropped five games in a row.

This, of course, led to O'Sullivan taking a seat on the bench, and Hill taking over under center.

Now that the J.T. O'Sullivan experiment is, for the time being, over in San Francisco, the 49ers turned their offense over to Shaun Hill last night and, well, we're still not exactly sure what happened. Basically, the 49ers are right back where they started -- in desperate need of a franchise quarterback. Heck, forget franchise quarterback, they just need a quarterback.

If only they had taken a signal-caller with a No. 1 pick in recent years, somebody to help turn the franchise around and ... oh. Right. Alex Smith. Yeah, about him ...

Earlier this season, 49ers general manager Scott McCloughan made it clear that the only way Smith, the former No. 1 pick, would be a member of the team in 2009 is if he clearly, without a doubt, was the starting quarterback heading into the season.

Well, as it turns out, there's another way he could find himself on the team: If he takes a pay cut. From John Crumpacker of the San Francisco Chronicle:

For those Bay Area Raiders fans looking forward to watching the DeAngelo Hall-Steve Smith Grudge Match II this weekend, I have some bad news: Hall's been fired. Okay, that's bad news unless you're a Panthers fan, but for those of you just interested in watching the game on your teevees, well, that ain't happening unless you're planning to move out of Northern California in the next two days.

You see, the game has been blacked out. Usually this occurs when the home team fails to sell enough tickets -- and that's the company line here -- but I'm convinced it's just the local FOX affiliate taking mercy on a dejected, beat down fan base.

This sounds about right: the 49ers could be looking for a new offensive coordinator come January. According to the Sacramento Bee's Matthew Barrows, who had the unenviable task of recapping the first half of San Francisco's forgettable 2-6 season, the team could part ways with Mike Martz after less than a year on the job.

...And even if Mike Singletary somehow salvages the season, his style already seems to be at odds with that of offensive coordinator Mike Martz. There's a very good chance that in 2009 the 49ers will be on their seventh offensive coordinator in seven years. The team can talk about building upon a solid foundation all it wants. The reality is that they'll largely be starting over - again -- next season.

Yep, that's right: seven offensive coordinators in seven seasons. It's sorta hard to create any continuity when the playbook changes every year. This isn't to suggest that Martz should keep his gig for just that reason; in fact, he probably should be canned for verbalizing his belief that J.T. O'Sullivan could be the best quarterback he ever coached. I think Kurt Warner's and Marc Bulger's legacies are safe.

Mike Singletary lost his home coaching debut today, to the tune of a 34-13 blasting at the hands of a horrible Seattle Seahawks. Oh yes, and he has to deal with Vernon Davis, who is generally hated by every single fantasy owner who has reached on him over the past three years.

And, of course, the 49ers, who appear to have wasted more of a draft pick on him than even Alex Smith. So it shouldn't be that shocking that Singletary decided to send him to the showers 10 minutes early and then call ole' VD out after the game.



Yeah. That's pretty intense -- not Mike Gundy intense, but still kind of psychotically awesome. And frankly, I totally back what Singletary is doing here; if I got Vernon in a room alone, or even 10 minutes in front of a podium after starting him for another week, I'd probably say the same thing.

Now, of course Singletary also knows that if he wants a shot at being the head coach of the Niners next year, he needs to make a pretty strong impression on the team and ownership. I'd say he got off to a good start today.

Via FanIQ

The 49ers canned head coach Mike Nolan on Monday, and apparently, it's just the beginning of a front office overhaul. The club managed just 18 wins in 55 games, and were 2-5 this season. That, along with 2005 first-overall pick Alex Smith's glacial development had just about everything to do with Nolan's current status.

But this morning, NFL Network's Adam Schefter reports that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice might be interested in a job with the 49ers in the near future.

As we all know, the NFL's trade deadline is tomorrow at 4:00 pm EST, and unlike most years there's actually some buzz about potential deals. Maybe it's because there's a larger than normal number of crappy teams that are already out of playoff contention. Whatever the reason, it's going to make a random Tuesday in the middle of October somewhat interesting for football fans. Unless of course nothing happens, then it's just another random Tuesday in the middle of October for football fans.

Today, Lions beat writer Tom Kowalski reports that general manager Martin Mayhew "is involved in exploratory talks with teams about a handful of Lions players."

Naturally, it's a safe bet to assume that wide receiver Roy Williams is among those players. But as Kowalski speculates, quarterback Jon Kitna could also be drawing interest from a couple of teams, specifically San Francisco and Dallas.

Kitna told a media outlet on Monday that he didn't believe his back injury was serious and that he could return to action, possibly in a week or two. The Lions could deal Kitna for a conditional draft pick, protecting both the Lions and Kitna's new team. If Kitna starts for a certain amount of games, the draft pick goes up. If Kitna's back injury lingers and he can't play, the compensation would be reduced.

Clearly, the stellar performance from Dan Orlovsky yesterday, combined with his Montana-like field awareness, has made Kitna's services no longer needed in the motor city. Assuming the speculation is accurate.

Tampa Bay ended a five-game home losing streak against Carolina, and in the process took over the top spot in the NFC South with its 27-3 victory on Sunday. And it was all thanks to Jeff Garcia!

Well, not really, but Garcia reclaimed his starting job and played like you would expect Jeff Garcia to play. He was accurate, didn't turn the ball over, and even threw a 2-yard touchdown pass to tight end Alex Smith.

In all honesty though, if there was an offensive star for the Buccaneers, it was probably 33-year old running back Warrick Dunn, as the 12-year veteran picked up 115 yards on 22 carries for his first 100-yard game of the season. Actually, it was Dunn's most productive day running the football since week two of the 2006 season when he picked up 134 yards as a member of the Falcons.

Vince Young's had a busy week. He started the Titans season opener against the Jaguars, played poorly, threw a couple picks, strained an MCL, got booed, supposedly threatened to retire/kill himself (not necessarily in that order), had his employer call the cops as a result, and spent the last few days refuting much of the speculation.

ESPN's Chris Mortensen spoke with Titans head coach Jeff Fisher about all this, and here's what we know (well, through Mortensen's eyes, anyhow): Young isn't guaranteed his job when he returns from the knee injury, and pretty much everything we read this week about the circumstances surrounding the Titans quarterback as he left the stadium following Sunday's game are false.

Apparently, much of the police report is wrong, thanks to Mike Mu, Young's local marketing manager. Mu called the team therapist, Sheila Peters (Young doesn't have a personal therapist), saying that Young had left his home without his cell phone, "threatening to quit and was speeding down the interstate with a gun in his car after talking about suicide." Reports had previously stated that Peters had spoken to Young, which wasn't the case.

Upon hearing this news from Peters, Fisher "did what anybody would do" and called the cops.