Singletary explains breakdown on fourth-down play

While I was 38,000 feet over Albuquerque today, Mike Singletary had his typical day-after game press conference.

He addressed the confusion at the end of the game, in which Shaun Hill was unable to clearly hear the call from the sideline for the fourth-and-10 play.

 

“(D)ue to the noise in the stadium, due to some kind of malfunction with the speakers. Shaun was able to get the call, but in terms of whether the call goes into the boundary or whether it goes to the field, that was something else, so he just had to make a call,” Singletary said. “But setting it, you didn’t get it to the side you wanted it to and it’s as simple as that.”

 

Singletary said he did not have any second thoughts about Vernon Davis being left on the sideline, instead of lining up to block against Joey Porter, who recorded the game-ending sack.

 

“No, I didn’t second guess it all and that’s one of those plays where hopefully you have it set to this side and you have someone in 55’s face,” Singletary said. “Coach Martz knows how dangerous the guy is. He had 16 sacks going into the game and so you are trying to get the call in, it’s not happening. I mean I heard him when they lined up. ‘No, this is not what I wanted, this is not it. It’s supposed to be set to the other side.’ But at the same time, it’s on.

 

“You don’t have to have Vernon Davis over there every time. You just need traffic. If you get that, the linebacker (Porter) is not the guy who’s just going to run over you. He’s going to have to throw some moves, so if that tackle gets a hand on him, or a receiver passes by him, or a receiver comes underneath, you’ve got a chance. You buy a couple of seconds and you get what you want. That make sense?”

 

The 49ers had Josh Morgan in the slot to the right with Dominique Zeigler wide right. On the left side, Jason Hill, Bryant Johnson and Isaac Bruce were bunched tight. If the formation has been flipped, Hill would’ve been able to chip Porter, those preventing him from using his quickness to take that outside rush. As it was, Morgan was too far from Sims and Porter to help in any way.

 

“Shaun called it to the left side and should have been to the right side and it was just a communication breakdown,” Singletary said. “It’s as simple as that. It would have been great to get it set to the other side, but it didn’t happen.

 

“Instead of that, we got the receivers over here on air, running a route on air. Instead of receivers over here, running routes where you got a chance to get a brush on the guy and slow him down and help (Barry) Sims have a chance to block the guy.”

 

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My colleague, Lowell Cohn, was at today’s presser. Here’s his blog, “The Pride of Mike Singletary.”

 

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