Mike Singletary's Biggest Mistake: Not Hiring Raiders' OC, Hue Jackson

Raiders offensive coordinator, Hue Jackson, met with the local media today.  After watching the video on the Oakland Raiders site, I started thinking about Mike Singletary's biggest mistake in not hiring Hue Jackson as his offensive coordinator. 

Not to say that Jackson is better the Scott Linehan or the other guys that walked away from the 49ers but he is defintely a better coordinator than Jimmy Raye and that is likely why Singletary was not interested.

When Jackson was asked if he chose not to accept the 49ers job, his answer was:

“No, no. That was their call at the time. And that’s OK. I feel I’m where I’m supposed to be now, here with the Raiders getting this organization where it needs to be.’’

After watching the Raider games this season and seeing Jackson's press conference today I could why see why Singletary didn't hire Hue Jackson.  Jackson is a guy who has been around the league and wasn't going to follow Singletary's offensive vision to run all the time.  He has his own vision of how to be successful on offense and that wasn't inline with Singletary's and as we all know, Jackson's vision is right.  Jackson likes to score and push the ball up the field.  He doesn't necessarily agree with the run the ball straight up the middle all the time.

In fact, even with the firing of Jimmy Raye, things don't seem to be changing.  I plan to write another post with more in-depth analysis but let me leave you with this:

According to the Football Outsiders, the San Francisco 49ers run up the middle on 66% of all their runs. 

49ers football.....TORTURE!!!!

Mike Singletary pulls an Andy Reid and fires Jimmy Raye

In a move that is similar to Andy Reid's "Kevin Kolb is our starting quarterback", Mike Singletary fired offensive coordinator Jimmy Raye a day after telling the media that Raye would be his coordinator for the rest of the season.

Mike Singletary said that he had no plans in changing the coordinator until late Sunday night when he reviewed some game tape and decided to make the change.

"Well after I got back here I went home, and I said you know what, I'm just going to go back and look at the film.  So, I came back here and basically spent the night here looking at film.  And just kind of looked at the overall view of where we are, and looking at where we need to go, and felt that I needed to make the change.  And so that's really all it was."

Quarterbacks coach, Mike Johnson, will take over as the new offensive coordinator and offensive assistant, Jason Michael, will take over as the quarterbacks coach.

Johnson has never been an offensive coordinator in the past but prior to his time with the 49ers he has been in the NFL for five years.  He was a quaterbacks coach for both the Atlanta Falcons, working with Michael Vick, and with the San Diego Chargers working with Drew Brees, Doug Flutie, Jim Harbaugh, and Ryan Leaf.

In 2008, Johnson was unemployed and spent time traveling around to different college programs studying the spread offense.  He spent time with Ohio State coach Jim Tressel and Ron Zook and his staff at Illinois.

Has Mike Singletary lost control?

A buddy of mine called me today to give me his "conspiracy theory" that the players of the San Francisco 49ers threw Sunday's game against the Seattle Seahawks to show Mike Singletary that they are tired of being average and want a change.  This request for a change started supposedly around last years Green Bay where they wanted to run the spread offense.


According to the Yahoo Sports article, players again approached coach "Singletary in the offseason to complain about Jimmy Raye and the overall situation."  Changes were made to have quaterbacks coach Mike Johnson take the call from Raye, but not to the actual playcaller, which was and still is Jimmy Raye, who seems to be the problem.


It has also been suggested that many of the quarterbacks in fact like working with Johnson rather than Raye and would rather Johnson be the playcaller.  There is also a rumor out there that Johnson had been alienated from offensive coaches meetings because he was a fan of Nate Davis and Singletary and Raye did not agree with that assessment. 


Today Singletary let it be known how upset he was with the article and the unnamed sources.

"If a man has something to say, he's going to come out and find a way to tell you.  But I don't want to deal with a rat."

It is very important to Singletary to control the information that is outside of the team but even this display seems a bit strange.

He made it clear he was less than thrilled to be spending the day talking about the Yahoo article that stated Jimmy Raye has a hard time making the offensive calls and getting them in on time.


In his weekly KPIX interview with Dennis O'Donnell, the details we thank David White for, he is less than interested in continuing to talk about the article and Jimmy Raye.  In fact, he almost gets to the "I Want Winners" Singletary.

Singletary: The point I'm trying to make is I don't want to talk about the Yahoo deal. It really pisses me off now that I sit here and think about it. We just talked today and I had a press conference today. I don't want to talk about the Yahoo thing anymore. Whoever said it, I don't care who said it, it's over. I want to move forward.

O'Donnell: So there's no truth to it?

Singletary: I want to move forward.

O'Donnell: Let's talk about Alex moving forward into Monday night. In situations where maybe he's not getting a play by a certain amount of time, if he can see ...

Singletary: Alex will be fine Monday night. Watch the game and you will see that Alex will be fine. I don't want to talk about time. I don't want to talk about clock. I don't want to talk about any of that. I want to talk about New Orleans if you want to talk about that.

Then O'Donnell asked Singletary how they planned to try and stop Drew Brees and how they were going to try and move the ball on offense.  Apparently, they are not going to try, they are just going to do.

O'Donnell: OK. Let's talk about trying to stop Drew Brees. 

Singletary: We will not try to stop Drew Brees. We will stop Drew Brees. Next question. 

O'Donnell: Let's talk about trying to move the ball against the New Orleans defense ... 

Singletary: We will not try to move the ball against the New Orleans defense. We will move the ball and we will score.

You know what Singletary, "don't tell me, show me."

Changing Jimmy Raye's location will not change anything

Even though the theme of the 49ers training camp this offseason was getting better it seems that the follow through on that idea has failed.  Not only did the 49ers not look better than they finished the season last year, they possibly even looked worse.

The 49ers offensive coaches have made what is possibly the easiest thing today in coaching, the hardest.  More than once in yesterday's game Jimmy Raye and Mike Johnson were having trouble getting the play call to Alex Smith which caused Smith to have to burn three timeouts early in the first half of which two were on the same drive in crucial third down situations.  On the second field goal drive the 49ers had a delay-of-game penalty on a 4th and 1 play.  This was the play where head coach Mike Singletary had chosen to go for it but after the delay of game decided to kick a field goal.

These type of issues are ones that happen in pre-season and should be cleared up by Week 1 and these are not the type of issues that a playoff team has.

Singletary said, in today's press conference, that they will look at the situation and make changes if necessary.  Some of those changes could include bringing Jimmy Raye down to the field so that he can call the plays directly to Alex Smith and they could avoid having the middle man, quarterbacks coach Mike Johnson.

"We will take a look at it and we will have an answer for it..."

What's to take a look at?  Your offensive coordinator is completely failing at the easiest part of his job and definitely failing at calling plays.

Having Jimmy Raye on the sideline is not going to solve the problem.  If he is not calling the plays quickly enought this issue will still prevent itself and will be a continual story-line.  Many teams have their offensive coordinator in the booth but somehow manage to get the plays called in a timely manner.