please visit http://www.49ersfancast.com

After declaring Jim Hostler to be the easy scapegoat, and reminding everyone that last year’s offense was 26th under Norv Turner, Mike Nolan said the following:  “Jim has done an outstanding job. He’s an intelligent guy that busts his tail. He’s always looking for ways to get it corrected.”

Jim Hostler has done an outstanding job, has he?  As the director of the worst offense in the league–nay, the worst since 1978–yep, outstanding.  Outstandingly poor.

This is not the article I hoped to be writing at the beginning of the season.  I have defended Mike Nolan since he came to this team.  He looks nice, he speaks well, he got us out of salary cap hell, and he’s given us some fine young players.  As a GM he’s done very well.  As my fellow fans have lambasted him from very early on, I was in his corner saying things would get better.  I pointed out that so far he had been able to put his finger on the problems and fix them. 

However, now it seems we have–as he would say–a communication breakdown, and unfortunately it starts with him.  He made a name for himself by putting the best possible spin on things in his press conferences.  He’s never the kind of guy to throw anyone under the bus, and he’s always there as the buffer between the media and the team.  However, this season things have taken a drastic turn.  For the entire season, he has been uttering the same words and  turns of phrase:

• “We have some talent on this football team.” 
• “We’re going to continue to get better.” 
• “We’re going to keep working hard.”
• “We didn’t expect to be here.”
• “(insert opponent) a good football team.”
• “(insert player, coach) is not the problem.  I wish it was because then my job would be easy.”

All season long Mike Nolan has been “looking for answers, trying to figure out what is wrong.”  Well there comes a time to do something drastic with that search.  Who is responsible for gameplanning the offense?  Who is responsible for utilizing the tools on offense?  Who is responsible for ensuring the offensive players are prepared to do their jobs?  Jim Hostler.  Repeatedly Jim Hostler has proven himself incapable of doing the job, and I’m not going to beat a dead horse from my last post.

What about the handling of Alex Smith’s injury situation?  Honestly, Smith had plenty of opportunities in locker room interviews to make his case that his injury was affecting his performance.  He was the one eager to come back sooner than later, but at the beginning we don’t know if the team forced him to rehab too much too quickly or if it was his own doing.  Nolan knew that Trent Dilfer gives them little chance to win, though he repeatedly states that he has confidence in him.  Smith came back against New Orleans, and Atlanta, and Seattle, and it was clear his mechanics were not what they had been previously.

During this time Nolan continued to assert that Smith was “fine, he just lacks confidence throwing the ball.”  Now Alex Smith was a #1 overall draft pick, and the guy expected to carry the offense, and his coach is essentially saying, “he’s not hurt, he’s just not mentally ready.”  I’d be angry if I were him, and he expressed his frustration to the media.

Afterward his coach said, “I’m sore, do I base my performance on that?  A lot of guys are sore.”  After praising Smith’s toughness against New Orleans, he now laments the lack of it publicly.  I’m sorry, but I think I take Alex Smith’s side of the argument.  If he’s injured, and it’s a factor, then it is what it is.  Nolan further exacerbated this situation two more times.

Tom Condon, Smith’s agent, asserted that now his client has tendinitis in his right forearm, a result of an overworked muscle that atrophied while in a sling.  When this was mentioned, Nolan referred to Tom Brady having tendinitis and playing through it, once again throwing Smith under the bus for not being up to snuff when he can’t even grip the ball properly.  Asked about Condon’s contention, Nolan took a swipe at the agent.  “I respect your question,” he said. “I don’t respect your source. It would be like me pretending to be a doctor.”  Nolan also gleefully asserted that Julian Peterson was not a doctor when the linebacker stated Smith was in obvious pain.

Then this morning, on the KNBR Morning Show in San Francisco, once again this topic came up, and again he said, “on any football team you’ve got a lot of guys that are banged up, and they keep playing.”  I have a question: should a kicker keep playing when the ankle on his plant leg is sprained?  Should a punter keep playing with a hamstring pull in his kicking leg?  Does a Wide Receiver play when turf toe prevents him from cutting?  Whenever you have an injury to the more intricate muscles in a part of your anatomy crucial to doing your job, it may seem small but it keeps you out.  If Smith can’t grip the ball right, it affects trajectory, power, everything.

Mike Nolan should be ashamed of himself.  He apparently has no control over the offense, no understanding that the offensive system is not working for his personnel, no recognition that Larry Allen has lost a significant step in his giddyup, no idea that his quarterback is visibly hurt, and no ability to just come out and state the obvious in plain English.

As Ann Killion said in her recent column, “They’re going to have to make a decision. Overmatched coach? Overmatched quarterback? Or an entire do-over?”  Let’s examine this.

The quarterback has had a rough go of it this season.  His receivers have dropped his passes repeatedly.  Darrell Jackson even went so far as to gripe against Smith, playing hurt, when a ball was in his grasp.  He muffed open catches in the end zone against Arizona and St. Louis, and overall is the biggest free agent bust of this NFL season.  His offensive coordinator is only good for the first drive of the game, using half-rolls and rollouts, play-action, tight end screens… and then falls flat the rest of the way.  The running game has been underutilized to ridiculous proportions, adding additional pressure to the youngest quarterback in the league.
His injury status has been grossly mishandled by his head coach, and his reputation has been assailed by the same in backhanded, insulting comments.  It is clear he is not the same since the injury, and his comeback may have exacerbated things for the remainder of the season.

An entire do-over would be far too expensive, and would only set the team back further.  By entire do-over, I assume Killion means new head coach, new quarterback, pretty much new everything.  The Yorks have more money invested in Smith than they do in Nolan, and so far Smith has shown himself to be a great teammate and great face for the team.  Were they to cut Smith, they would still owe him a substantial sum of guaranteed money, so it behooves them to stick with him.  They really do have a good bit of talent on this team, and are just a couple playmakers away from having a great core on offense.

That leaves us with overmatched coach, and this clearly is a ding-ding-we-have-a-winner proposition.  Nolan’s defensive mindset has clearly been a boon for the defense, with players such as Marques Douglas, the injured Manny Lawson, Patrick Willis, Michael Lewis and Nate Clements.  No one can say Nolan has assembled a bad defense, having improved greatly over last year’s unit.  Everyone can see we’re a couple beefy D-linemen away from being a downright scary defense.

The problems are, and have always been, with game management and offense.  Last year’s team got a pass with Norv Turner leading the way, Gore getting 2000+ yards from scrimmage, and Smith improving.  Nolan continued to make ridiculous game management decisions, squandering timeouts and wasting short-yardage opportunities.  Now, with a severly inexperienced Offensive Coordinator who seems more interested in giving Trent Dilfer 40 passes a game than giving Gore 20 runs, and proving that he knows how to put a gadget play in at the absolute wrong time, Nolan has stuck by him.  Hostler comes from IUPUI, which isn’t even a Division I college school, and then had one ignominious year as Chad Pennington’s QB coach before coming to San Francisco.

Mike Nolan’s most staunch defense has come in favor of the most decrepit, hopeless part of his football team.  He has been aptly questioned by the media, yet continues to spew the same drivel all season long, refusing to alter his cadence even one bit.  Despite asserting that “everyone has to look at himself to find out what he can do better to help this football team,” Mike Nolan seems to be the only guy not doing it. 

But let it never be said he is unable to see the parts that are working.  “We’ve got a very exceptional and very unique onside kick,” he said Monday.  Thank God.  And I was starting to worry….

The famous Painted Ladies of San Francisco are weeping today.  This team has not been this bad since 1978, the year before Bill Walsh was hired.  We appear to be entwined with yet another coach who cannot handle his personnel effectively, resorting to backbiting while at the same time praising “the character of this football team.”

It’s time for a change.  John York has the room to bring in a new coach, and this time it must be someone with a real track record of success.  It must be someone with ties to the glory years of this team, and that means the Yorks have to swallow their pride, and hire someone who may actually be friendly with Eddie DeBartolo.

If they ever want to build a new stadium, if they ever want to stop being a laughing stock, if they ever want to appear to know what they are doing, then Carmen Policy is waiting in the wings.  I think he may know a thing or two about good coaches.