Another coach fired

On average, six NFL coaches are fired each year. They used to wait until the season was over, but not any more. The Rams and Raiders fired their coaches after four weeks, and the Niners just fired their coach, Mike Nolan. The Niners organization is not as dysfunctional as say, the Raiders, but this is one franchise that has fallen a long way.

Mike Nolan followed almost precisely in his father's footsteps. Dick Nolan played for the New York Giants, and became the head coach of the Niners. Mike was the defensive coordinator for the Giants before taking the top job in San Francisco. During his tenure, the Niners brought in some expensive free agents, and they have a fair amount of talent on both offense and defense. Far too much talent for their 2-5 record. Which is why they fired Nolan.

But it wasn't all Nolan's fault, and he's not the only one who deserves to be fired. He was a good defensive coordinator, and aside from his quirk of wearing a suit and tie on the sidelines, I thought his biggest failing was the non-development of Alex Smith. Therein lies the real problem with the Niners. Their quarterback is J.T. O'Sullivan, a journeyman who has played for more teams than I can remember, and wasn't very good on any of them.

When you have the first pick in the draft, and you select a quarterback, and invest mega-millions in him, he isn't supposed to get beaten out by a career backup. That's a personnel decision, and that is on the general manager, not the coach. Nolan and Smith came to San Francisco together, and it looks like they more or less left together, too. I think Nolan needed to have more patience with injuries and poor play to develop a young quarterback. When I look back at the first selection overall in the draft, it looks like a crapshoot. In 2003 the Texans took Carr, in 2004 the Giants took Manning, and in 2005 the Niners took Smith. Result: one Super Bowl MVP and two guys who got run out of town.

But I think there's plenty of blame to go around in San Francisco. The offensive coordinator is Mike Martz, who ran the Greatest Show on Turf when the Rams won the Super Bowl in 1999. The trouble is that he must still think he's in St. Louis. The Niners have traditionally been a passing team, and that works fine when you have Montana, or Young, or even Garcia at quarterback. It doesn't work so good with J.T. O'Sullivan at the wheel. The Niners have an excellent running back in Frank Gore, and he should be carrying the load to take the pressure off an inexperienced quarterback.

Instead, Martz has him throwing the ball all over the field, with predictable results. O'Sullivan is leading the lead in interceptions, and the Niners are losing one game after another in the fourth quarter. If no one can convince Martz to run the ball, he should be the next one to go. At last the Niners brain trust made one inttelligent decision. They bypassed Martz, and hired Mike Singletary to replace Nolan. If anyone can command respect, it's Singletary. He's only the interrim coach, but if he can get the players to respond, the job will become permanent (at least in NFL terms.) Singletary is a leader of men, and I don't think underachivers will last very long working for him.

With O'Sullivan at quarterback, this season is effectively over for the Niners, and since there is more housecleaning to do, the end of the year would seem like a good time to purge the front office as well. This organization has gone nowhere in four years, and it wasn't all because of Nolan.