Mike Singletary On San Francisco’s Brutal Last Second Loss: “You just got to take a step back and say hey, you know what, hopefully that opportunity comes again somewhere down the line…”
September 30, 2009 – 12:35 pm by Michael Bean
You have to be impressed with what San Francisco 49ers head coach Mike Singletary has accomplished during his brief time overseeing the once-proud franchise. Singletary finished off the 2008 season with the interim head coach tag still placed on him, but displayed enough leadership (and won enough games) to have the interim label removed and be named the head coach for the 2009 season. Through three weeks, it looks like that decisions was a wise one. San Francisco is 2-1, having only lost on the game’s final play this past Sunday to the Minnesota Vikings at the Metrodome. Singeltary joined KNBR in San Francisco to talk about how he told his team not to be dejected following the miraculous win for Minnesota, the injury to Frank Gore, and what he sees in San Francisco’s next opponent, the St. Louis Rams.
On the Frank Gore injury situation:
“I guess right now we’re looking at two to three weeks. And I guess the injury he has is unrelated to the prior injury. So it’s going to be interesting. It’s a right ankle strain and a right hind foot strain. Don’t ask me what those mean, but anyways, that’s where it’s at and he’s got two or three weeks to heal and get better. So, we’re going to miss him because he’s off to a great start. And when he comes back, he’ll just have to pick up where he left off. In the meantime, Fred Coffee gets to step in and I’m very thankful we have him. And I have all the confidence in the world that he will continue to do a good job. So I’m excited about that.”
On if he’s learned how to deal with tough losses over the years:
“You know, the only way you hold on to something is if you go out and totally get away from who you are. You don’t know how in the world you went out and played like you did, but you went out and tried to do the things..you stayed the course, you came up short, you just got to take a step back and say hey, you know what, hopefully that opportunity comes again somewhere down the line. But I got to move on, I got to get better. So it’s just a matter of looking at the situation, analyzing it, realize and be honest about what happened and moving forward.”
On if he regretted not going for the knockout punch with his offense late in the game instead of trying to milk the clock with the run:
“Obviously it’s one of those things where you can say we should have done this, we should have done that. But I just think it’s real important to look at why we made the decision. We wanted the clock to keep running, we felt they were in the right defense for the play we wanted to run, and it just didn’t happen. I’m not going to go in to all the details of why it didn’t happen, it just didn’t happen. So yes, I could go back and say Shaun should have thrown the ball, but now, you throw the ball, it’s incomplete, the clock is stopped, they still have another timeout…It’s just too easy to go there, but I just want to take the onus and say you know what, it didn’t happen. So, that’s not the only game we have, we have another game thank God coming up here. And we just have to focus going forward and next time we have to make that play.”
Listen here to Singletary on KNBR in San Francisco
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