Thank you, Jesus. I am at ease that the team at least cares about winning. No more Nolan! That sounds great. Go Singletary!!

Thank Matt (and welcome home).

Now we can all exhale. Whatdoyaknow, the Yorks (Jed) do somewhat care about fooseball. I hope our NIners are fired up this weekend and put some hurt on the seachicks.

Lot's of new stuff to keep you busy now Matt.
Thanks for the visit, looking forward to the change in attitude from the team now.

A good guy that just couldn't win.

Good luck Nolan.

Coach,

Good luck, thank you for the foundation layed so far.

YES THERE IS A GOD! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

I had to get that out of my system!
I'm at ease too, no more SUIT! No more Nolan. Ding Ding the witch is dead! Only took 11 days early to give us a TREAT didn't it? Yes!

Mike Singletary has a lot of work ahead. The 49ers lead the league in giving up sacks, given up points, and 31th in turnovers ratio. Those are about as bad as it gets. Good Fortune to him.

Matt, can you find out who decided to fire Warthrop? If it was Singletary then I'm already impressed. Might well have been Martz, McCloughan, or even the Yorks. Warthrop never put together a line that could do a decent job of pass protection, and the run blocking only occasionally looked decent because Frank Gore was the running back! Warthrop was another one of those "attitude guys" that Nolan loved but that couldn't coach/play their way out of a paper bag (think: Dilfer).

Nolan has given all he was able to give.
He took on a very tough assignment, but his plan for the perfect beast is taking forever to develop.
When top 4 draft picks aren't contributing by year 2 there's a major problem IMO.
Brandon Williams,Jason Hill,David Baas, even Vernon have not done anyhting meaningful and cost you time and money to underachieve.
It is a sad reality that coaches get fired for the shortcomings of players, but his unwillingness to experiment and give youth an earlier test have cost too much time.
Our lines alone are the glaring weakness and little or no emphasis has been used to correct them.
I wish him well, but the time had come, the change needed to made last year I felt, so this is as good a time as any to shake up the business plan.

Over the past few weeks, I've watched in amazement as the Niners would fight through wildly uneven stretches; there seemed to be no way to predict when something good would happen. Yet I always thought the Niners would be 2-6 at their bye, and I didn’t know many who felt more optimistic; if the Niners win Sunday, every loss will have come at the hands of a playoff-bound opponent.

I could tell that the writing was on the wall – Matt’s blog had taken a hard turn for the sarcastic recently, and the open speculation about Nolan’s job security indicated to me that something was going on.

The whole Nolan/Smith era feels like a missed opportunity. Too bad; Nolan gave everything he could to this team, and he deserves better than to leave in disgrace with a fanbase who chewed him up and spit him out (even right after his father died) openly cheering his dismissal. I hope he lands as a DC somewhere and does well, just as I hope Alex Smith lands somewhere else and rehabilitates his career.

I wish Singletary all the best, as I genuinely respect him, and I’m a Niner fan first and foremost…but I still can’t believe Nolan got fired for losing to playoff teams. Good luck, Mike.

Marc - I see what you're saying, and I understand the sentiment among some fans that change needed to happen just for the sake of change; still, I can't help but think that a few fourth-quarter TOs cost us a couple of wins, and that those wins just cost Nolan his job...and I'm not sure I feel great about that.

...and just to emphasize something (before people jump on me), I'm hoping that Singletary does great; the schedule gets easier from here, and the Niners have some talent. Cut down on TOs and dumb penalties, and we might have something.

(By the way, on a totally unrelated note: Did anyone else see Kwame Harris false-start FOUR TIMES on Sunday? I still don't see ex-Niners tearing up the league, although Peterson and Carter are both doing well for themselves.)

Matt, I'd like to know your thoughts on this...

My money says the new head coaching position was
Mike Martz if he wanted it, and he declined.

I would love to hear that first speech given to the players from Singletary......Matt you gotta bribe somebody with something and sneak in a digital recorder.....it might be truly historic!!!!

historypeats it's always bittersweet from a sports perspective to see people put out of work.
Unfortunately, the job is about production and, the results have been pedestrian at best.
Teams in this league are about fans and revenue.
It is a business, and thankfully for most of us, the fan base doesn't pay our way. Politics and sports, what have you done for us lately.
He'll catch on somewhere else, it's the nature of the business. Singletary was appointed by Nolan, like many others on the staff, so it now has implications for them as well.
Warhop I'd guess was part of the initial move instituted by management, but I'd like to see Mike Singletary given the authority to make other changes if necessary to show that he has some ideas of his own. Probably won't occur until the BYE week I'd imagine?

I might be the only one to not like this move by the 49ers. I felt last year that blaming Nolan for the Offense was unfair especially since he had no real choice when it came down to the OC. This year I felt we made progress, I thought we started each of the last four games strongly and had a chance to win all four of them. That is a sign of an improving team to me. All I wanted these last four weeks was a chance to win not neccesarily a win. As for this move I think it is one the wrong time to be making a coaching change and two I think it is the wrong move to promote Singeltary is unproven as a Head Coach. We are giving someone that has never been a Head Coach or for that matter an Defensive Coordinator the top job.

To be honest I actually think there should be a rule against firing coaches in the middle of the season. Mike Nolan made this team better talent wise, while i will agree that he would probably not have made us a Super Bowl team I felt he did a good job with us, by making us better. I see a majority of players he brought in or drafted that excelled, I also see some under-acheivers. Jason Hill is not one of them IMO. Alex Smith has under-acheived and so has Vernon Davis, but I do still have faith in Vernon Davis. I love Josh Morgan and I thank Nolan for drafting him.

I have been one of the most unpopular fans on the message board and here because i have stood by Mike nolan and I will continue to stand by him. However I will root for this team like always but will say this. I truly beleive that this move will actually cost us games, and this week might be one of them. Making a move in the middle of a season does nothing but distrcts the team. We continue to blame the coaches but never blame the players, I say it is time that we blame the people who actually play bad.

JAGNINER81,

Now those players have no one to hide behind. The coaches have paid the price, the HC and O line coach have been canned. They were the coaches most responsible for this bloody mess.

Now Vernon Davis, and all the others cashing welfare checks will have to be held accountable.

- I vote that they bring in the young O coordinator from New England as Head Coach. Get rid of Manusky and Singletary and bring in an aggressive defensive coordinator. I just don't think Singletary - who has been passed over so many times as HC for other teams, is the answer. He has every chance to prove me wrong.

Pete Carroll, I would love to see as head coach, but something tells me with these lazy players the 49ers have, and in this NFL environment, he wouldn't be able to duplicate his USC success.

I have to *grudgingly* applaud the owners for firing Nolan. Nolan was chasing offensive success; Norv Turner really screwed him. Nolan never really recovered losing Norv Turner, and tried to over compensate by going all out with Mad Mike Martz. He tried to chase offensive success with the JTO gamble, and clearly lost.

- You can't chase success in the NFL that way, it must be earned by hard work and players that care enough to play. Warhop and the O line cost him his job this season. I hope Singletary will identify the O line as the zit that needs popping.

I have been loyal follower of this blog for about a year now...I have to say how excited I am to see Singletary get his chance.

But I do not think Nolan was all bad, remember 4 years ago the talent level on this team was the worst in the NFL. I feel that we have currently have the talent to make it to the playoffs (especially in the NFC West). This teams just needs to find some discipline & passion to win.

Let's see how the rest of the season pans out!