We've reached a rather bizarre path in the development of Mike Singletary as head coach.  The 49ers currently sit in the midst of a 3-game losing streak, which one would think would lead to less than stellar thoughts about Coach Singletary.  And yet there reminds a positive vibe within the 49ers and folks are not jumping on Singletary's back to get things figured out.

Last week Singletary's approval rating here was at 89%.  Over at ESPN.com it dropped down to 85%.  ESPN has their current Singletary ratings going and he's back up to 91%.  It's amazing what a close loss to one of the best team's in the NFL can do for a guy.  One interesting note: The other 3 NFC coaches have received a combined 11,000 plus votes.  Coach Singletary has received close to 15,000 by himself.  I find it rather amazing the kind of passion that shows.  Are 49ers fans just that intense about Singletary, or does he inspire more voting from all NFL fans scouring the approval ratings?

Tim Kawakami had one of the more interesting links this morning discussing Coach Singletary's continued evolution.  As Kawakami put it, Singletary can inspire, but can he coach now that things are struggling:

Now that Sunday's 18-14 loss in Indianapolis has pushed the 49ers into a three-game losing streak, let's see if he can coach.

Let's see if Singletary is fluid enough and canny enough to negotiate his team through this lull. Let's see if pure adrenaline and passionate belief blends into good, consistent coaching.

So I guess the question now is what the next step will be in the evolution of Mike Singletary?  This offseason we heard a lot of talk about no moral victories, and the idea that action needed to take the place of talk.  Well, right now there is certainly some action, but there also seems to be a good deal of talk.  Will the team get this talk turned into action anytime soon?

So what do folks think of the Mike Singletary at this point in the season.  At this point do you approve of the job Coach Singletary is doing as head coach of the 49ers?

It seems like every week we go into this approval rating, something happens that gives folks pause about Mike Singletary, and something else happens that gives fans further reason to support Singletary.  Coming out of this past weekend, that little equation has gotten a bit harder to even out (or view in a positive light).  Over at ESPN.com, they ran their weekly coaches' ratings and Singletary is down to a career low 84%.  It's impressive that he's been at such a high rating, but given the path of his head coaching career, it's a number that has to be taken in a specific context.

As we look at Sunday's game, Florida Danny had an especially pertinent comment in the recap thread.

point #2 is that this game was nolan-esque from a coaching perspective. all those delays and wasted timeouts were pretty nolan-esque. what’s really a disgrace though is that the performance we saw today was based on two week’s-worth of preparation. how does a team have 2 weeks to prepare for a game, and come out as flat and unprepared as the 49ers did today? again, nolan-esque.

During and immediately after the game, two camps seemed to develop.  There is one that viewed the performance as very much Nolan-esque.  They viewed the delays and wasted timeouts as sitting on the coach's shoulders in the game management aspect of his job.  Danny's own language pointed to the frustrations that developed under Mike Nolan.  At that point folks were quick to jump on Nolan.

The other camp looks at some of the issues as having more to do with Alex Smith's rustiness.  He might be in game shape physically, but he needs some time to get the mental side of the game completely back and going.  I think one of the Texans fans in the recap or game thread was talking about that and I think some folks latched onto that theory.  Does anybody agree on this?  Always fun to be able to mix the QB discussion into every possible thread, right?

So, the team has fallen to .500 and faces a tough stretch of games with a new starting QB.  Do you approve of Mike Singletary's work at this point?  We'll also be back later this week with the Jimmy Raye approval rating.

Last week we introduced the all-new Jimmy Raye Approval Rating.  In spite of the team's early success there were plenty of rumblings about the performance of the 49ers offense.  The first three weeks saw a team that was trying to rush the ball into brick walls and not getting all that creative.  Folks were begging for even some screens and sweeps on occasion.  Nothing crazy, just a little this and that.

Well, a week later, we saw some changes.  My view of the offense last week versus St. Louis was that the play-calling was fine, it was the execution that was severely lagging.  The offense used outside runs, screen passes, and even threw to Josh Morgan quite a bit more.  The problem in execution came down in large part to the offensive line.  Shaun Hill was not getting nearly enough time to make plays against a St. Louis Rams defense that should inspire fear in nobody.  In his Monday press conference, Singletary specifically called out the play of the two offensive guards as major culprits.

Going forward, the offense will remain a major area of interest for me.  Obviously there's the Michael Crabtree addition.  We'll deal with that more later.  For now, with Atlanta coming to town on Sunday, it's a matter of what will we see on Sunday from the play-calling.  Is the development and creativity of the offensive game plan going to continue to increase each week?  How much more of this Shaun Hill-Vernon Davis connection will we see?  The Atlanta defense isn't all that great, but we said the same thing about the Rams.  What will we see this week, and do you approve of where Jimmy Raye is going with things after four weeks?

Last week when I ran the Mike Singletary approval rating, my biggest concern was how the team would rebound from the devastating loss in Minnesota.  Mike Singletary is a great motivator, but even many optimists had to be concerned following the loss.

Well so much for those concerns.  The team rebounded to paste the Rams 35-0.  One might initially argue that the team obviously struggled out of the gate, only leading the Rams 7-0.  Offensively the struggles were certainly there.  The offensive execution was a little less than stellar in the first half.  However, given prior offensive struggles, I don't see that as an issue of coming out flat after the previous game.  I say that in part because the defense was flying all over the field in the first half.  They absolutely shut down the Rams throughout the game and were playing at an extremely high level.

The defense is certainly talented, but I'm willing to give credit where credit is due.  Mike Singletary has been masterful with this team from a psychological edge.  The team made some additions to the roster this offseason, but they're really not a whole lot different from last year's squad.  The major variable in all this has been Mike Singletary.  Bill Walsh will always be the coach on the Mt. Rushmore of 49ers legends.  And yet, while it's still early, Mike Singletary seems to be on his to securing his own little spot in 49ers lore.  We'll certainly have to re-address this in the future, but consider me happy so far.

I've attached Coach Singletary's Monday press conference after the jump, but I wanted to point a couple more things that jump to my attention about his actions with the team.  I found his thoughts on halftime particularly interesting.  It showed the level to which the players are truly buying in to the message:

On whether players have begun to take ownership of his message and he can take a step back at halftime and let the players carry on his message:
"I thought yesterday I saw a lot of guys disappointed in the way the first half went. Like I said, there were no shouting matches, it was just a matter of, ‘Guys, just remember what we said we needed to do.’ They kind of took it from there. ‘Yes, we’ve got to go out and we’ve got to do this. And, we’ve got to do a better job. We’ve got to execute better.’ The coaches didn’t really have to talk a whole lot. Whenever you have that situation, you know you’re going in the right direction."

On whether he wants the players to carry out his message:
"The less I have to say the better. The less I say, the better I feel because I’m going to say what has to be said and hopefully they beat me to it all the time, so we can stay on the same page."

The team has bought into the Mike Singletary philosophy hook, line and sinker (to steal Danny's VD metaphor).  This is not a team that will be quitting on their coach anytime soon.  The team never seemed to quit on Mike Nolan during the down times, but in my opinion this is a different kind of buy-in.  It's more of a playoff mentality (ironic enough given Mike Nolan's "Win the West" mantra!)

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Alright, due to popular demand, I've decided it's time for the Jimmy Raye Approval Rating.  There has been a lot of complaints about the play-calling and I am especially curious to see how many people are fed up with Jimmy Raye.  In the Mike Singletary posts I've asked the No voters to provide reasons for voting No.  In this poll, since I'm guessing it will not be quite the wave of support we see for Singletary, I'd like Yes voters to provide their reasons.  At this point I'm actually not quite sure how I'd vote.  I'm going to think it over, vote and then throw out some reasons for my vote and also for the other side.

The timing of this works out really well thanks to Florida Danny's post this morning.  Danny looked at the newest set of DVOA rankings and had some interesting thoughts about the play-calling.  If you haven't had a chance to check it out, I think it's worth a read before voting in this poll.

I do think there has been some good and bad in the play-calling.  Although the stats indicate a team passing much more than they might have declared (see the 60/40 run declaration), most folks would agree there have been opportunities to pass that have in fact been passed up (no pun intended).  At the same time, when they have gone to the air, the team seems to be dialing up some solid plays.  Raye indicated he wanted to take advantage of having an athletic freak like Vernon Davis, and he's done a pretty good job at that when Davis is utilized.

This week could be especially interesting in the passing game.  Coach Singletary said in his most recent press conference that the team would not change things up just because they have a rookie in at running back.  And yet, one has to wonder if that's a little bit of gamesmanship.  Might we see a more active Vernon Davis this week?  Might we see an actually active Brandon Jones or Jason Hill?  If you've been dying to start a 49ers WR or TE in your fantasy league, this week and next week might very well be your two best opportunities.  I could be entirely wrong, but just call it a feeling.

Well, I'd say after Sunday's finish, this week's approval rating may be more of a projection of how folks think Mike Singletary will rebuild this team's confidence heading into the rest of the season.  In year's past I could see a Nolan-coached squad curling up and giving up on the season.  Throw in the Frank Gore injury, and just forget about it.  Game, set and match, every 49ers opponent!

Obviously we still don't know how this team will respond following that kind of loss.  Ironically enough, last season's heart-breaker of a loss to the Cardinals was followed by a home game against the Rams.  This past Sunday the team was talking big in the post-game lockerroom, but the first half of the Rams game will certainly tell us quite a bit about the reality of this team's resolve.  I'm extremely interested in seeing how the team comes out of the gates, particularly without Frank Gore leading the offense.  I'm not worried about motivation given Singletary's much spoken of motivational abilities.  Rather it's simply the inherent potential for a letdown.  I don't think it will happen, but we'll see.

The rest of the country is starting to weigh in over at ESPN.com and have shown a 92% approval rating for Coach Singletary.  Singletary finished week 2 at 95% so I'm guessing a post-loss dip shouldn't be too shocking.

I thought I'd use this post to look at some of Mike Singletary's comments from his lunchtime press conference yesterday.  There was some concern here after Singletary seemed to basically say that Raye was doing his thing and he had Singletary's support and that's all there is to it.  Thankfully, somebody at the press conference asked the question most of us were wanting answered:

On whether Hill should get more opportunities to pass given his effectiveness in the fourth quarter:

"The thing that I want to say about the third-down play, the thing I want to say about the last play of the game and when you’ve got two seconds - it is very easy to sit here or sit there yesterday and look at the game and say, ‘Why don’t you do this? Why don’t you do that?’ You’ve got 12 seconds left in the game, and it’s amazing the difference 12 seconds brings, many questions. The bottom line is, he called the thing that he called yesterday because it made sense. Obviously, every decision that you call when it doesn’t work, then all of a sudden it doesn’t make sense. Why would you do that? And I know that’s your job, but the thing is, just understand that you call plays because you believe they’ll work, and when they don’t, it just means that you have to go back, you learn from it and you go from there. I said this yesterday and I’ll say it again, I’m not going to go into, ‘Well maybe he should have done this. Maybe you put Nate Davis in. Maybe you put this guy in. Maybe you run the loop-de-loop.’ No. We’re not going to do all that. We did it. It did not work. Guys, we’ve got to go back to the board and do something else."

I highlighted the last line because it stood out to me.  He followed that up with this Q&A:

On whether he expected to get more than two yards per carry in the fourth quarter:

"I will say this: When you get towards the fourth quarter, yes, you would like to say that, ‘Man, hopefully we get more than two yards a carry.’ There was a point in the game where I felt we were beginning to get what we were looking for in the running game, and something happened where the guy takes the ball on the kickoff and takes it back for a touchdown and breaks the momentum. And you’ve got to go back to the drawing board. When you look at yesterday, it was just a situation where on the offensive side of the ball, we were fortunate to make some plays at times, but you don’t – the quarterback has success throwing the ball a couple of plays here to [TE] Vernon [Davis] or [WR] Josh [Morgan] or whatever it may be. You want to try to get back to a rhythm, and we just did not get back into a rhythm. And that’s the bottom line in the game."

Given all this, on the one hand Singletary talks about going back to the board because something didn't work.  On the other hand, in the second answer, he basically says that the running game was actually starting to get on track.  And in that particular drive, the 49ers rushed Coffee 5 times for 30 yards (12, 13, 3, 3, -1).  So are we really just going to see more attempts at establishing the run against a knowing defense?  If this weekend reveals the "same ole sorry Rams" it will be hard to get an answer.  Of course, if the Rams do shut down the 49ers rushing attack, we'll be getting just as much of an answer.

A lot of this falls in the realm of the offensive coordinator, but Mike Singletary has some decisions of his own to make.  For some folks, the answer to this week's poll might be indicative of their thoughts on these issues.

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Every season ESPN.com runs approval ratings for coaches.  It allows for folks to express their approval or disapproval for a coach.  Most people had problems with Mike Nolan and we never ran an approval poll for him.  Once Mike Singletary took over we began to run weekly approval ratings.  Given the fresh start to the season, I think we'll roll this feature out again for the entire season.  At this point it might seem like a pointless exercise.  After all, the honeymoon has not ended for Mike Singletary, and a opening week road win certainly can't hurt him.

Nonetheless, if things were to go south at some point, it'd be nice to see the progression of the approval rating week to week.  For those wondering, Mike Singletary finished the 2008 season with a 99.9% approval rating.  215 people voted and all but 1 voted yes.  I'm guessing the no vote was by somebody who who wanted to stand out.

Win or lose, each week I'll use this post to take a look at Singletary's performance in the game and general thoughts on him.  If you think I'm off on a certain point, feel free to offer your own take on the issue.

What I thought was the most intriguing moment of week 1 was the timeout he called late in the third quarter when the Cardinals were driving.  The Cardinals had picked up two quick passing first downs, followed by a Beanie Wells six yard rush.  Singletary proceeded to called timeout and brought the defense too him for some kind of speech.  When asked after the game, Shawntae Spencer indicated he couldn't use the language Singletary used.  So clearly it was a fire them up kind of speech, as opposed to any sort of strategy speech.  Not shocking to consider, but worth clarifying.

I'm somewhat surprised there hasn't been more discussion about this moment given the somewhat unorthodox nature of it.  I'm guessing that might be due in part to many folks not getting Fox coverage of the game.  The Cardinals did get one more first down (on a Haralson offsides), but had to settle for a field goal.  How many folks think that timeout helped settle down the troops?

The way I look at Singletary, I do think the rah-rah motivational stuff has some value coming from him.  Nolan couldn't pull that off.  Singletary is a Hall of Famer who's been there and done that better than any of the current 49ers.  I'm not going to say that will win games for this team, but I can see how it would at least work better coming from Samurai Mike than coming from someone without his playing pedigree.

During the regular season, we ran a weekly post asking whether or not you approved of the job Mike Singletary was doing as head coach.  Obviously it wouldn't influence anybody, but it's useful to know how the readers feel about the head coach.  In the case of Mike Singletary, there really was little doubt about the results.  The most recent poll gave Singletary a 99% approval rating with only 1 No vote.  That's some love people.

I've decided to add an approval poll for GM Scot McCloughan.  This will not go up every week.  Rather, we'll do it at major junctures of the offseason and regular season.  This first one makes sense since we're post-draft and the next mini-camp is starting this weekend.  We'll probably do one again in June, one at the end of training camp, and a few others throughout the year.  Any suggestions for further frequency of the poll?

Aside from the Michael Silver Yahoo article, there has been a bit of a divide on McCloughan's approval among readers.  If I had to predict, I'd say most people support the job done by the GM so far.  After the firing of Mike Nolan, McCloughan is definitely next in line if things don't improve.  However, I don't think that necessarily puts him on the proverbial hot seat.  Maybe more of a warm seat.

This offseason produced some quiet dividends in free agency.  Nothing super splashy like the Justin Smith or Nate Clements signings of years past.  However, they were solid moves to shore up some depth and need issues.  The team got lucky in the draft as Michael Crabtree fell to them.  They dealt for a 2010 first round pick and they made some picks that excited some and left some scratching their head.

So, do you approve of the job Scot McCloughan has done as general manager?  Feel free to use your own measuring stick for approval.  And of course, feel free to comment about why you voted the way you did.

FOOCH'S UPDATE: Thanks to wjackalope for putting together our new approval rating graphic.