Mike Singletary 2009 Approval Rating: Roster Management

The mean rating over 753 votes in the Game Management poll was 6.36919. The median was, as you stated, “around 6,” and the mode was 7, with 206 votes. Can you tell I’m bored in class?

with “roster management” is that few reporters dig very deeply into it. Regarding the kick return game, cutting Rossum only began to make sense when someone (I think Singletary but it may have been McCloughan) said that they saw him as injury-prone. And in fact Rossum was picked up by Dallas and was immediately injured and out for the year.

Still, Spurlock was sitting on the roster doing nothing and he had lots of return experience (he returned a kickoff for a TD for Tampa, as I recall).

I expect there are contract issues and other things that aren’t immediately apparent to the fans. But it would be nice, after the season, if someone, and maybe this would be better directed at McCloughan, walk us through why certain moves were or weren’t made.

And who got the great idea to have Battle return kicks? That may go to explaining why Everest is gone.

However, O-Line and ST were obviously problematic.

Interesting thought that these position coaches are gone and two new ones (one of whom Sing wanted years ago as part of his staff) have arrived in enough time to prepare for the draft and FA.

I think maybe we can read into this a bit as far as chemistry is concerned. Due to the fact that Sing demands a particular style I would venture to say that he NEEDS to rely of people he trusts to game plan.

If this were true then it may explain our inability to game plan effectively. Why? Because Raye was not the first choice. And although at the surface Raye seems to be Singletary on offense, there are obviously issues.

My BIGGEST issue with roster management this season was allowing Battle to return and putting in Keith Smith when you know the Seahawks have to go deep…

thought he did OK for the first part of the year, but then I took away some points for the handling the Rossum cutting and the whole PR fiasco

Spurlock, Rossum. Nuff Said

8-8
Ahmad brooks – sack machine
Alex Smith- back on top
Crabtree- started him right away

As a rookie coach, he made some rookie mistakes that I think (hope) will be fixed this year. I think special teams was a huge problem and it was mostly attributed to the personel that was in there. It seemed as though they were searching for a new return man nearly every single week.

Some of the packages were in question as well but that could very well be the way that Raye intended it, so I am not sure that can completely be put on Sing.

I guess there wasn’t anyone else at the time but Roman in coverage was just a notch above Lewis in his coverage abilities. When Reggie Smith came back, I was disappointed that he didn’t get more chances; it couldn’t have been worse, that is for sure.

As far as the receivers were concerned, I was really confused as to why Jason Hill didn’t get more snaps on offense. He came up with some big plays and big catches and has seemed to throughout the course of his employment with the 49ers. The same can be said about Brandon Jones… he does have talent, he just needs opportunities. Sometimes I wish we’d line up with 4 Wide and with Gore in a single back formation. Vernon drops more passes than he should still and I don’t think it would hurt to have Jones and Hill in there with Crabtree and Morgan… or a rookie wide receiver if we draft one. Even if Vernon is in on those specific plays, you can still rotate Jones and HIll in and out.

Running backs: Gore is getting to that point in his career that health issues will start building up and Coffee was just not the guy to relieve Gore when he needed a rest. Gore is at a point in his career where he cant afford to take the beatings he has been. I hope that this personel issue is fixed in the offseason. Coffee just wasn’t good enough to take the full load off of Gore.

The Quarterback situation is sort of a head scratcher… I don’t really even know what to say here. I guess in hindsight it was the right move. The offense looked a bit more lively when Smith went in… So the change in Houston actually made a case for Smith and the resurection of his career. It is still up in the air as to what Smith’s career will ultimately end up.

Offensive Line- I guess part of me was a bit upset that Sims didn’t stay in as a starter when Staley came back. Personally I think that Sims played better than Staley did this season. I think Sing could have thrown Staley back over to the Right Tackle position, he certainly could not have been worse than Snyder. Then we could have drafted a Left Tackle this year and justified the money not having to worry about paying too much for a RT.

well i was going to give him a 9 but then i remembered he tried to fix our o-line with oft injured players instead of drafting one. had to bump him down to an 8 for that reason alone. all together however, a decent job

We saw the emergence of some players who were previously considered just average or poor, but we also had issues.

I felt Staley should’ve moved back to RT after he came back. I think Sims out performed him this year and I would like to see an open competition for that spot. I don’t know why Hill didn’t get more playing time. He showed some good stuff out there but didn’t get out there often enough. Same with Brandon Jones when he came back from his injury. Why were we paying him $3 million to return punts and make one catch?

I didn’t see the problem with releasing Rossum or Sheets, but we had other players who were talented enough to step in. Spurlock maybe, or M-Rob. Maybe even Josh Morgan who did a great job at returning kicks for us.

I think he got a lot accomplished with little to no FO help. I think this draft and FA will be a better one to grade him on. he has a season under his belt and should know what he wants.

The main missed guy, Sheets, did nothing in Miami, despite two of their main Backs being injured. Rossum got hurt in his first game for Dallas. Spurlock sat unemployed for nearly two months before anyone signed him. Seems the decisions that were most controversial worked out as Sing and McClo expected. If McClo can continue to add talent on the roster, Sing and his coaching staff seem more than up to the task of getting results out of these guys.