Cohn: Time for 49ers to put up or Singletary to shut up

<p>What does Mike Singletary do for a living?</p><p>This question is especially relevant because the 49ers are about to play the mediocre Chicago Bears and the season pretty much rides on this game — as in we’ve arrived at Desperation Time. If the Niners win, you might say they’re still alive. If they lose, chant a prayer over the dead.</p><p>So, what does Singletary do for a living? He doesn’t draw up the defensive game plan for the 49ers because Greg Manusky does that. He doesn’t draw up the offensive game plan because Jimmy Raye does that.</p><p>We rule out Singletary from the day-to-day nitty-gritty of football stuff. Look at him on the sideline. Sometimes he’s not even listening on his headset. It’s like he’s a spectator or a passenger on a train moving ahead with someone else at the controls.</p><p>OK, many head coaches detach themselves from technical details, although it’s fair to point out that some pretty good coaches got their hands dirty — or should we say, their fingers inky — drawing up either offensive or defensive game plans: Bill Walsh, George Seifert, Mike Holmgren, Jon Gruden.</p><p>You get the point. It helps to be in the know. Coaches who do not act as their own coordinators put themselves at the mercy of their offensive and defensive coordinators, at the mercy of underlings. Can you imagine Walsh allowing himself to slide into that kind of dependency? </p><p>The other kind of coach — the Singletary kind — is a chairman-of-the-board coach. This is what Singletary does for a living. He is chairman of the board. He contemplates the big picture. He is a football philosopher. He communes with the assistant coaches and peps them up, and meets the media and gets his message across.</p><p>Chairman-of-the-board coaches can be successful — John Robinson was chairman of the board at USC. But these coaches are vulnerable and right now Singletary is highly vulnerable. It is unclear if Raye is a good coordinator. Same goes for Manusky. If you insist they are cutting edge at their professions, offer proof.</p><p>Maybe it’s not quite accurate to call Singletary chairman of the board. More precisely, he is chairman of the voice. He speaks. He is earnest. He is sensitive. He is thoughtful. He is articulate. You can imagine him at his job interview, imagine him talking his talk and casting a spell over Jed York, and York leaving the meeting in a daze and saying to general manager Scot McCloughan, “What a voice.”</p><p>Above everything else, Singletary is a motivator. He seems to define his job as the necessity to motivate others. He has a powerful personality and he tries to impose that personality on his coaches and players, and he tries to win games by the sheer force of his will.</p><p>This would be a worthy enterprise if it actually worked. But personality and will do not win football games as Singletary’s four-game losing streak should tell him and us. Singletary is coaching professional athletes, grown-up men who rarely need the old rah-rah speech. Those went out with the Gipper rant.</p><p>Professional athletes need to learn specific techniques for each game. If they have a head coach who’s always resorting to the voice and the stare and the motivational rigmarole, they tune him out and grow bored and wonder what else he has to offer.</p><p>Does Singletary have something of substance to offer? It’s one thing for him to shout he wants “physical with an F,” a very good one-liner. It’s quite another to play that way. To Singletary, we insist: Don’t just say it. Play it.</p><p>We know this. He began the season with a certain offensive approach. He would run the offense through Frank Gore. He harped on this theme even though everyone knew Gore would get hurt carrying such a burden. Singletary told us the run-first philosophy was the bedrock position of his coaching. So, against Tennessee, Alex Smith threw 45 passes — gorged out on passing, even though the run game worked well. Where was Singletary’s philosophy and why could he change it so quickly? Either he believes in running or he doesn’t.</p><p>You wonder if Singletary really has convictions, is committed to what he says he believes, or if his convictions are just fancy words that blow here and there like hot air.</p><p>We know this. A month ago, Singletary’s career record was 8-5. Now it’s 8-9. This is not a sign of progress. The Bears game is do-or-die for the 49ers. Does Singletary know how to do?</p><p>For more on the world of sports in general and the Bay Area in particular, go to the Cohn Zohn at blog.pressdemocrat.com/cohn. You can reach Staff Columnist Lowell Cohn at lowell.cohn@pressdemocrat.com.</p>