1st – historically NFL teams who change head coaches midseason do NOT have a history of turning things around that season – so let’s be willing to give Singletary some time to learn the ropes, how to coordinate all the assistant coaches, and how to learn all the other “head coach” things that you can only learn by experience. Personally, I’m tired of giving the Niners more and more “time” to turn things around, but we have to. Doesn’t sound like they’ve decided whether to stick with Singletary after this season – fine, but it’s unhealthy for to team to keep changing their head coaches too often (look at Oakland).

2nd – This is good – if we’re going to have to put up with costly coaching calls during the game, which option would you prefer?
(A) bad decisions made out of pure stubborn refusal to change your strategy or to adjust to anything that clearly has been proven NOT to work, or
(B) bad coaching decisions made out of inexperience by a coach learning the ropes, willing to admit he was wrong, and then adjust his strategy having learned from that mistake.
Wouldn’t we obviously prefer B?

3rd – “General Manager Scot McCloughan and Head Coach Mike Singletary will have a press conference at noon, Tuesday, October 21 at the team’s facility in Santa Clara. The press conference will be streamed live on 49ers.com.”

1) Seems like bad timing. How do you let your plans to fire Nolan leak out of the head office…and then cite rumors as your reason to bump up the firing timetable? Nolan had a decent history of beating the Seahawks. Why not let him play it out…unless you were afraid that he’d win, thus undermining your reasoning for firing him?
2) What’ll this do for team unity? All the players comments indicate that while they hated losing, they still respected Nolan. He certainly could’ve done more to help them out, but you’ve got to think this will lead to some displeasure with management.
3) Maybe Singletary’s speeches will do the trick. Yeah, he’s inexperienced, but maybe the team will rally around him (and Nolan’s ghost) and Nolan can be inadvertently responsible for the turnaround that he was himself unable to make happen.
4) Even if Singletary doesn’t work out as an HC, at least they’ll get a look at him in that role. And seriously, can you think of a coach being significantly worse with HC-game-management type things (timeouts, challenges, matchup-specific game plans) than Nolan was?

While we’re talking about front office people, What do people think of Holmgren as a potential GM/Parcells-with-the-Dophins position candidate? He’s running the Seahawks into the ground this year, and he doesn’t have a particularly good draft record, so is he simply washed up? You know at the end of the season, the status of McCloughan is going to come back up for discussion…

to see if the direction of the ship is being turned around.

I’ll be curious to see how much input Singletary has regarding the offense. I agree that it needs to cut down on the longer passing routes and go back to more Gore. I wonder whose decision the Warhop firing was. That might have been Martz’ input.

I like the idea of Singletary being coach. Let’s get behind him.

Blegh. I would hope they learned their lesson with Dennis Erikson. Good college coaches who haven’t done well in the pros do not turn out to be good coaches with their 3rd or 4th NFL team, as a rule.

I’m excited for Singletary, and while I think they will end up with a different head coach next year, we’ll get a chance to see if Singletary can make things interesting. The whole experience thing doesn’t bother me…you’ve got to start somewhere, and now’s as good a time as any.

will Singletary wear a suit?

I’d imagine now that Nolan is gone so is the 3-4. We all knew that Nolan was on the hot seat and based on the past draft the Niners showed no commitment to the 3-4, none of Balmer (he’s probably best suited for a 4-3 anyways), Smith or Grant are 3-4 specific picks. So what do you think are the Niners going to stick with the 3-4 for the rest of the season and possibly beyond? Or do they start the transition mid-season? Personally, I don’t mind the 3-4 but I think it’s time for the Niners to stick a fork in it as their lack of commitment to it is probably why it’s suffered. Plus I think the roster, as currently constructed, is almost better built to play a 4-3 anyways.

why not just wait until the bye week? Let the man go out on a winning note, I was probably one of the few who actually liked Mike Nolan. I feel he got a bad wrap when it came to that offense. I mean how can a offense get good when their isn’t any consistency? I hope that he gets another shot.

But with that said I’m actually excited for Mike S. Aside from the fact that another African American is getting a chance to be a head coach in a predominantly Caucasian Position( hand clap for the yorks) I think he will be a good coach…I didn’t say Great but Good. So yes lets get behind him and see if he can help right this ship, I still feel there is a chance for us to turn it around.

My last question is this…will he have enough balls to say J.T. has had a chance, it is time to make another change. I’m so sick of I.T. O’sullivan throwing the game away right when we get momentum…Shaun can not be any worse…am I alone in that feeling?

I.T…..anyone who is still with this guy must be rooting for Ralph Nader to win the Election..talk about a long shot to be successful. And while I’m at it…is anyone else disappointed in Bryant J?

What will expectations of Singletary be? Intensity and effort in the team and decent game management, or do we actually want some wins over teams we are not supposed to beat? Or perhaps improvement in certain statistical areas? It seems tough to judge.