New coach, same 49ers

It took a while, 25 seconds to go in the second quarter in fact, but the sold out Candlestick crowd finally let out a long, boisterous cheer, loudly announcing their approval. It wasn’t a highlight touchdown that woke them from their stupor, or even an exciting, momentum turning play. All it took was backup quarterback Shaun Hill taking the field, signaling the long overdue benching of one J.T. O’Sullivan.

It would seem that the brief love affair with the journeyman — turned training camp sensation — turned franchise savior is over. Apparently the reason the 29-year old O’Sullivan had never started a game in the NFL before this season wasn’t just circumstance or the ignorance of past coaches but rather on merit. And while the 49ers could very well have been telling the truth all these weeks when they were firmly stating that he was the best quarterback on the roster, the crushing reality of that statement is less a testament to O’Sullivan’s abilities and more an admonishment of the others.

In losing 34-13 to the previously 1-5 Seattle Seahawks, who were without their own starting quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, the 49ers found themselves in an early hole, largely of O’Sullivan’s making. The NFL’s leader in turnovers coming into the game (Note: Not a good statistic to be leading), O’Sullivan fumbled on the team’s first two possessions and the highlight of his first quarter was a touchdown-saving sprint to cut off rumblin’ bumblin’ stumblin’ Seahawks defensive end Patrick Kerney. The defense was able to tourniquet the bleeding enough to only allow two Olindo Mare field goals, but a third Seattle drive, memorable for coach Mike Holmgren’s successful "oh-what-the-hell” decision to go for it on 4th-and-six, culminated in a one yard plunge to paydirt for running back T.J. Duckett to bring it to 13-0 for Seattle.

O’Sullivan marched the team to one 42-yard field goal by Joe Nedney and appeared set to do so again, only to fall victim to a bad decision by an over-stimulated Mike Singletary, who apparently calculated that if Holmgren, a longtime head coach with a bulletproof reputation, can gamble on fourth down, then surely so could he. In his head coaching debut Singletary eschewed a makeable 47-yarder to take his chances on 4th-and-four from the 30, with O’Sullivan awarding the decision by throwing perhaps his last meaningful pass as a professional, a bullet intended for wholly covered Arnaz Battle that Seahawks corner Josh Wilson picked off and returned 75 yards to make it 20-3 and spare all involved a dramatic second half.

"Besides the interception, I felt like I was throwing the ball accurately,” O’Sullivan declared afterward, the point not quite sinking in for him that all quarterbacks play wonderfully except on the plays that they don’t.

It wasn’t all bad for San Francisco. Frank Gore had his customary 94 yards on the ground plus another 65 on seven receptions. And Hill came out for the second half and "did some nice things” because it’s a well-known NFL rule that all backup quarterbacks coming into lost causes get to do some nice things. The two scoring drives he led, including a three yard touchdown pass to Jason Hill in the 4th quarter, served as mere footnotes however, particularly in light of the fact that despite Hill’s relative competence, the 49ers still got outscored 14-10 in the meaningless second half, thanks to two long hookups (43 and 62 yards) from backup quarterback Seneca Wallace to fullback Leonard Weaver.

The real story here is that his awry second quarter roll of the dice aside, Singletary emphatically demonstrated both during and after the game that he is not Mike Nolan. The former Hall of Famer had the stones to do what should have been done long ago and benched prima donna tight end Vernon Davis for his boorish, me-first antics after he jogged off the field lackadaisically after being whistled for a stupid personal foul. Singletary decided that Davis didn’t appear sufficiently contrite for his error and after a brief conversation ordered the sixth pick of the 2006 draft to hit the showers early.

"It was something that I told everybody at the very beginning of the week: I will not tolerate players that think it’s about them when it’s about the team,” Singletary explained afterward, adding, "I believe this: I would rather play with ten people and just get penalized all the way until we got to do something else, rather than play with 11 when I know that right now that person is not sold out to be a part of this team.”

Singletary then revealed that Davis, perhaps in a reconciliatory mood, wanted to speak to him in the locker room after the game but was rebuffed, saying, "He wanted to talk to me and I assured him that he did not want to talk to me right now.”

Davis, after all, was Nolan’s pick. Singletary has no personal attachment to him, O’Sullivan or anyone else on the roster. He will not play favorites for anyone (though giving Gore an occasional "that-a-boy” is probably a good idea) on the roster unless they give him a reason to beyond the zeroes on their paychecks. The man is not afraid.

So disgusted was Singletary by his team’s performance, he felt the need to apologize for it afterward, but not before peeling a couple of layers of paint off the locker room walls in an… emotional, let’s say, postgame speech to his players.

"We did not play anywhere near where I felt we could have and rather than go into the ‘well this happened here and then that guy was out of place’ I’m just going to apologize and just tell you guys to keep watching,” Singletary said.

Oh we will Coach, for the sideline entertainment, if nothing else.