A Deep Breath On Monday Afternoon

I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’m a pretty typical fan. By that I mean that I more or less live and die by the teams I like, and when they embarrass themselves, it really gets to me. I get reactionary, irrational, emotional, angry, upset, depressed and most of all, my objectivity goes right out the window. That – I think – is pretty universal across the board among all fans who truly love their team.

Now, at the same time, for years now, I’ve felt that way on Sunday after a loss, but on Monday (or maybe midweek after a particularly horrible loss) I am able to calm down, take a few breaths and be realistic about where the team is. When you are fair with the facts and understand what is truly going on, you find it more difficult to really be upset. Yeah, it still bugs the hell out of you, but your objectivity takes over, and you end up being much more understanding about everything.

This year has been much different, however. I have found that from week two on, every week I have been getting more and more irritated. I have been on board with Nolan from day one, and have defended him basically every time people have had a problem with him – but this year I’ve been getting increasingly critical and upset with him each week. As the days go on, I’m not getting more calm and understanding, I’m getting more angry and upset. I’m finding more fault all around.

For the past couple weeks especially, fans are becoming more vocal about Mike Nolan, and questioning if he is truly the coach that can get this team over the hump. I’m not going to skirt the issue, I have been a part of that too – not calling for him to be fired mind you, but openly questioning his ability to coach properly. I’ve questioned everything from still insisting on starting Derek Smith, to allowing overly conservative philosophies to rule his team in key moments (case and point – playing for a field goal in their last possession against the Ravens). I’ve helped contribute to an increasing snowball of anger toward Nolan and my typical “day after objectivity” has been missing.

Interestingly (at least to me) – it has come back to me today.

Maybe its a reaction against the criticism that has maybe gone a little too far. Maybe its just that I’m so disappointed by this teams play that they have killed my typical passion and I really only have that objectivity left. I don’t know, but today, I took a few steps back, calmed down, took a few deep breaths and started to really analyze this whole mess in a more fair and realistic way. This is more or less what I came up with.

Lets start with the biggie – no, I am not abandoning Mike Nolan. I am still rather firm in my belief that he is a very good head coach, and that entertaining his being fired is absurd and unfair. In fact, I think the movement that has begun begging for that to happen is little more than a simplistic, over-reacting snowball of negativity. One I have contributed to, and I feel bad about that.

As fans, our memory is short – and I think maybe our early struggles have made us forget a few things. Lets take a trip down memory lane, shall we?

Its week eight in 2006. The 49ers had just been slaughtered 41-10 by the Chicago Bears. Billy Davis had been fired during the bye week, and yet San Francisco still had no defense.

At that point, the 49ers were 2-5, had given up an AVERAGE of 34 points per game, and had seen such absolute blowouts as 41-0, 48-19 and 41-10. Fans everywhere were beginning to complain that Nolan had no idea what he was doing, couldn’t manage his team or his coordinators, and that maybe the whole Nolan experiment wasn’t really working.

Sound familiar?

What happened after that week? Well, the 49ers went 5-4 down the stretch, and really got their historically bad defense straightened out. Through those last 9 games, the 49ers defense allowed only 19 points per game and played inspired football. They took absolute garbage personnel and made it a very effective unit that could keep its young and average offense in games.

Fans are inherently nonobjective, which isn’t fair to anyone. Last year when the defense was struggling, we were all crucifying Nolan about the defense, and his insistence on not firing Billy Davis. Why didn’t Nolan listen to us, the enlightened fan, about Davis – especially since we were right about him?

Well, Nolan gave the guy a chance as a coordinator, and I think that it says a lot about him that he stuck with the guy when every niner fan on earth was calling for his head. It showed he isn’t going to just sell out his guy because the fans are pissed off, he wanted to give him a fair shot at “getting things straight” with the defense. That might be frustrating for us as fans, but a head coach can’t simply get rid of somebody like that every time the fans (who largely don’t really know what is truly causing problems) go into panic mode – that happens every week about something. And lets face it – with more or less nobody competent on the field for personnel, any first time DC will struggle and its hard to really fault the guy.

But eventually, when Nolan had given Davis enough chances, it became clear that he just wasn’t up to the task, and he fired him. Then the defense started to perform well, and we built some steam and played well down the stretch.

It has now been five consecutive weeks this year where the offense basically has played like the defense did last year. Because of Norv Turners late departure, Nolan was forced to hire somebody who he likely wouldn’t have otherwise. Our playmaker tight end, who was JUST getting going got himself killed. Our golden boy quarterback got his shoulder wrecked, our line is not playing well, and our WRs were always weak. It is somewhat understandable, then, that much the same way he gave Davis a shot, he is giving Hostler a chance to figure things out – not firing him for struggling through five games.

The fan in me is outraged after two games, and wants him fired. Isn’t that the funny thing about fans – we don’t really think anyone deserves a chance and at the smallest sign of weakness, we want heads to roll. The pragmatist in me, however, understands that 5 games, 2 of which you have been completely sapped of talent, is not exactly a fair way to judge a new coordinator. Don’t get me wrong, I do think we may be seeing signs that Hostler is NOT up to snuff based on the extremely poor calls he has been repeatedly making for several weeks now, and I believe that it is now becomming apparent to Nolan it just isn’t working out, and a change is needed.

I honestly think this is Billy Davis on the other side of the ball, and it won’t take long for Nolan to get this mess straightened out. Yeah, I know – I’m as annoyed by five straight weeks of the same non-changes and coach speak as you are, but we live week to week, remember? None of us has much perspective. It’ll get fixed.

Now – are there things about Mike Nolan that have been irritating the hell out of me this year from an objective and rational point of view? Yeah – no doubt.

He’s stubborn. He has severe problems with objectivity about players he likes (Derek Smith) – he will actually hurt the team rather than replace the guys he has latched on to. He is loyal and does not bend to public pressure to act on something – which is something I typically admire, but he takes it a little too far and misses chances to improve by not acting. He has an EXTREMELY conservative streak when he is in a position to win the game. When guys like Belichick are going for it on fourth and goal when they are up by 20 points, Nolan seems to “coach scared” when it counts.

I could go on.

But guess what folks, I could take ANY coach in the NFL and pick him apart and list his problems. Who’s the best coach in the NFL right now, probably Belichick, right? Well I could write pages about my problems with him as a coach. Nobody is perfect, and every coach has his warts. The trick with that is, can the coach overcome his problems and make them irrelevant, or even un-noticed? Good coaches can – bad ones can’t. Simple as that.

Why is it that I believe Nolan is in fact a good coach, and that this teams problems are not due to his failure as a coach? Glad you asked.

Despite the problems, the man has cut the most useless fat off this team, and done it mercifully quick. He has replaced it with phenomenal talent on both sides of the ball. Granted, talent that is currently being wasted on offense, but that’s irrelevant to my point. He’s a young, firey coach, with ties to the 49er organization, and he seems to genuinely love San Francisco and wants to take this team somewhere. He has taken the defense from easily the worst in football last year, to playoff caliber in ONE year.

But the biggest reason I don’t have any desire to fire him and think that people who do are getting completely irrational, is that the offense is not Nolan’s fault. The horrible offense this year is a combination of injuries to skill positions, terrible play from the offensive line, and a rookie offensive coordinator who has been getting progressively worse every week.

You can’t fault Nolan on the injuries to Smith and Davis. You can certainly fault him for some of the line play, because he simply refuses to put in David Baas – but overall it has more to do with eroding skill, injuries and lack of cohesion. And who can we fault for Hostler? Norv Turner. If he had left at the beginning of the offseason, Nolan would have had opportunities to look at a wide variety of offensive coordinators and hire the offensive version of Greg Manusky. As it is, the loss of Turner was so late that Nolan was left with basically only his remaining offensive coaches to choose from – and lets be honest, promoting ANY of them was a total roll of the dice.

And let’s not forget as a matter of perspective here, that the 2003 Eagles were 2-3 to start the year, and people were ready to crucify Andy Reid. All that team did was make it to the NFC Championship game. Let’s not forget the 2005 Bears were 1-3 and in those three losses scored, 7, 10 and 7 points. Everyone was ready to lynch Lovie Smith at the time, and that team finished 11-5 and went to the playoffs – winning their division.

So, while I think a massive dominating turnaround like those teams is unlikely, lets not forget this is football, and things like that happen ALL the time.

So sure, I’m as annoyed as anyone with some of what it is to be Mike Nolan. He has been irritating everyone here at 49ersnews with his lack of action, refusal to honestly discuss the teams problems with the public, insistence on sticking with players and a coordinator who are not meshing, and so on. But in the end, as maddening as it is to watch the 49ers through five games, I’ve begun to realize that in reality, there’s really only a few things missing on this team right now, as much as this pathetic offense might not make you think so. Getting people healthy, and replacing the offensive coordinator with somebody competent are really the only two things I believe are standing in the way of this team living up to all that hype it got this offseason.

The whole “fire Nolan” movement has become very scapegoat-ish, which is something that fans ALWAYS tend to do far too soon. It might make us as fans feel good to pin the blame on somebody and use absolutist words to describe them, decrying them as incompetant – but I don’t think its very useful, or accurate. I think our energies are much better channeled when we are calm, rational and actually pragmatic about how we evaluate our current situation.

Once things are in place, I think Nolan will be an excellent coach for a very long time. I’ll still criticize him and complain about this team, but I’ll believe he is a capable coach until shown otherwise. This isn’t the homer in me speaking folks, this is the objective football analyst – something that many of us have lost sight of with how disappointed we have all been this year.

Here’s to a post-bye week surge my freinds.