Rick Vaughn: F***in' Dorn. Game shoulda been over by now. Dorn coulda had that ball. He tanked it on purpose.
Jake Taylor: This isn't the California Penal League, Vaughn. We're professionals here. We don't tank a play for personal reasons, so cut the crybaby shit.
There’s been a lot of talk last night and today that Martz is trying to undermine Mike Singletary and purposely screwing things up. One person found comments from another site indicating they felt Martz was actually going out of his way to sabotage this team. Everyone is certainly entitled to their opinion, but I'm also entitled to my opinion that that sort of idea is just a little bit ludicrous.
Before people jump all over me, I actually believe that if Mike Singletary is brought back as head coach next season, Mike Martz will not be brought back as offensive coordinator. The rumors have floated around that Scot McCloughan was not totally on board with this decision. He felt the 49ers did not have the correct personnel for a Mike Martz offense. Personally, the hiring excited me, but it might fall under the "shiny penny" theory of distracting people from the problems at hand. And of course, given how poor the offense was performing, any improvement was likely to be greeted with great fanfare.
In spite of all this, I do not think Mike Martz is in the business of undermining his head coach. People already know he has an ego; that much is certain. And I do think his stubborn streak could lead him to sticking with his way thinking it's right when most of the rest of the world sees otherwise. However, if is seen as a coach-killer, it would certainly hurt his value on the open market. If he can turn this offense around, or at the very least improve it, his value on the open market goes up tremendously; possibly even to the point of being offered a head coaching position. If the 49ers struggled the rest of the way and Mike Singletary was not offered the full-time HC job, why wouldn't the 49ers go completely outside the organization for the new coach? The offense is improved, but if they're not executing properly under Martz (b/c he's purposely sabotaging the team), why in God's name would they promote Mike Martz????
Earlier today Martz met with the media and he took responsibility for some of the chaos that took place after Jason Hill got to the Cardinals 1 yard line (prior to the world’s longest QB spike):
"There was some chaos that I created on the sideline. I did a bad job there. We were trying to spike it there and I called a personnel change and the personnel change went in when we were going to spike it and there was a lot of confusion. I just went too fast with everything and it created too much confusion. That’s my fault more than anything else. And then poor Shaun [Hill’s] standing there. He’s waiting for everyone to get off the field and there’s just so much confusion. That’s just a bad job of coaching on my part. I knew what we wanted to do. I called out two different things at the same time. It all happened at the same time, and we don’t want that."
Additionally, people think that he’s pissed that his boy, J.T. O’Sullivan, lost the job and he’s clearly never going to support Shaun Hill as the QB. While they're only words, to those who think that I submit:
"Yeah, I love [Shaun's] demeanor in the game. I really love his demeanor in the game. I don’t like his mistakes. The one interception was just a very poor decision. He got…the other interception he got fooled a little bit by the receiver. The receiver was going one way and when he threw it, he took off going the other way. So I wouldn’t blame him for that at all. "
While they are just words, he certainly could've thrown Hill under the bus on that play. Maybe I'm being too naive about this, but if Mike Martz wants to get the most out of this job (as far as potentially getting a head coaching job somewhere), it's in his best interest for Shaun Hill to succeed. I just cannot buy into the notion that he would purposely sabotage this team just because J.T. O'Sullivan lost the starting job. Again it might be naive to think so, but I think it's absurd.