And, also, the first chance to get his comments on Alex Smith’s comments about his comment on a lack of offensive leadership in the season’s first seven games. Got that? I’ve posted the relevant questions here. I’ll update this blog entry with some analysis/decoding later this morning:
BRIAN MURPHY: Who is your starting quarterback Sunday versus the Rams?
SINGLETARY: As of right now, Troy is taking the reps. But in
terms of who the starting quarterback is going to be, we’re just going
to continue look at Alex and see what the trainers and the doctors say
and we’ll just kind of go from there.
MURPHY: Is this something that’s going to be monitored all week or do you know right now how his shoulder’s going to be?
SINGLETARY: I have an idea, but I’m not a doctor. So we’ll see how it goes.
ANALYSIS: Singletary likely has an idea that Alex Smith
won’t be healthy enough to play. That was certainly my impression after Smith
spoke with the media Monday. Consider: He hasn’t been cleared to practice, he
hasn’t thrown a football since his injury, he just started doing light weight
work with his shoulder Monday and he said he wants to be careful about
returning too soon, noting Detroit’s Matthew Stafford reaggravated his shoulder
injury Sunday.
MURPHY: Should we expect then that Troy Smith will probably be the starter?
SINGLETARY: I think you should expect that sometimes before the game we’ll know who the starter is going to be.
ANALYSIS: Evasive, yes, but a prudent answer. No sense in
naming Troy Smith the starter before Alex Smith has been officially ruled out
of Sunday’s game — creating a possible distraction with a move that would suggest
Alex Smith was being demoted. If Troy Smith doesn’t play well against the Rams,
Alex Smith can reassume his job next week when, presumably, he’ll be healthy
enough to play. If Troy Smith improves to 2-0 as the starter, then Singletary
can deal with whatever mild fallout comes from officially benching Alex Smith.
MURPHY: We pick up the paper this morning and obviously Alex had
some comments about the concept of leadership. We need to get into that a
little bit because it seemed like he was offended that there was a
comment (you) made to CBS that leadership has been lacking in the
offense. Is that fair to say that what you said to the CBS crew in
London is accurate, that leadership was lacking under Alex the first
seven games?
SINGLETARY: I’ll put it this way, the comment that leadership was
lacking … I would say this, I really don’t know how that was construed
that way. The thing that I want to say is this about leadership and try
to nip the whole thing in the bud. When you look at Alex Smith, Alex
Smith is everything you want your quarterback to be. Alex Smith is a guy
that comes in, he’s going to lead by example. That’s his idea of
leadership. He’s not going to be a guy that tells someone to do
something, asks someone to do something that he’s not (doing). He’s
going to watch film. He’s going to invite the receivers, the linemen,
he’s going to invite everybody. The communication, everything. He’s
going to do that. So, who wouldn’t want that in their quarterback? The
guy is courageous, he’s fearless, he competes. But his style of
leadership, he leads by example. That’s who Alex Smith is. Troy Smith,
he’s a guy when I’m sitting down and talking to the analysts, we were
talking about Troy Smith, we were not talking about Alex Smith. So when
you ask me, what do you like about this kid? As I do with all my
players, I do my homework. I called Jim Tressel. I called Ray Lewis. I
called anybody that had anything to do with the kid. And the first word
they said was leadership. The kid’s a leader. He’ll get in your face,
he’ll take charge, he’ll do all those things. And when you look at our
offense and you have a Vernon Davis and you have a Michael Crabtree and
you have guys that want the ball, that’s what a receiver does. I wanted
to make sure that there was a guy in the huddle that could police that,
that could handle themselves. Someone that had the poise and the
composure and could go out there and play a football game and give us a
chance to win. That’s the bottom line.
ANALYSIS: Wow. A mouthful.
Singletary suggests his lack-of-offensive-leadership
comment was misconstrued. Last week, he was asked about his lack-of-leadership
comment and didn’t say it was misconstrued. Instead, he said, in part, the
following: “What I meant by that was; the quarterback position to me is the
position that you may have a great arm, you may have a great mind, you may have
great feet, but leadership is the ability to bring the entire offense together
knowing that there are going to be times that you’re going to have setbacks … That’s
a big part of his job is that leadership in knowing that, ‘I don’t care what
happens, what comes or goes, we’re going to take this ball and we’re going to
go downfield and we’re going to do it as a team.’ So that’s the thing that I
was talking about.”
Last week, in other words, he was more direct in implying
that Alex Smith wasn’t the type of take-charge, in-your-face leader he
preferred.
This week, on the heels of Alex Smith’s pointed response,
he is saying the exact same thing but couching it much more politely. After some verbal bouquets, he says Alex
Smith’s “idea of leadership” is to lead by example. He won’t order his
teammates around, but will invite them to watch film. In contrast, Troy Smith’s
idea of leadership is to take charge and get in the faces of Mr. Crabtree and Mr. Davis if they start squawking too much in the huddle.
In your face. Or inviting the whole gang to study film.
Which sounds more like Singletary?
MURPHY: OK, so does that mean, the comment about leadership, you
saw Alex’s comments this morning. Are you concerned that Alex has
misconstrued what you’re trying to say? That you’re questioning his
leadership?
SINGLETARY: No. Alex and I talked yesterday. Matter of fact, Alex
and I have a relationship that extends beyond some of the comments that
could be written or misconstrued in the paper, or whatever. I think
when you have an open line of communication with people it eliminates a
lot of the things that you really need to talk about in terms of
leadership. Alex knows exactly where I stand with him on leadership. He
knows exactly how I feel about him as a quarterback. He knows that at
the end of the day, who’s going to be the quarterback — the guy that
gives us the best chance to win. And that’s as simple as that.
ANALYSIS: If this relationship was so strong, these comments would have stayed behind closed doors.
MURPHY: OK, it almost sounds like in a way the quarterback job
might be open in a sense. Or are we here to say if Alex is healthy, he’s
your guy: That the only thing preventing Alex from playing is his
shoulder. Is that right? Or should we say, no, it’s more of an open
competition between Troy and Alex?
SINGLETARY: You know what, let’s just say this. Right now, the
thing that I really, really want to focus on … what we do not have here
is a quarterback controversy. What we have is a team that’s 2-6, that’s
competing for the division. What we have is a team coming in, St. Louis,
coming in on Sunday. That’s where the focus is. And when Alex Smith and
Troy Smith and all this about leadership and all that, at the end of
the day, who’s going to help this team win? Who’s going to give us the
best opportunity to win? And as far as who that quarterback is going to
be, we want to win, Alex wants to win, we all want to win. But the
bottom line is, it’s going to come down to who’s going to give us the
chance to win.
ANALYSIS: Again, wisely keeping options open and doing his best to diffuse a quarterback controversy.
MURPHY: OK, I just want to make sure so we’ve got this nailed
down and we can move forward from here. The stuff you said Saturday
night in London to the CBS crew that they broadcast the next day about
leadership, that doesn’t indicate that you regret naming Alex your
starter because he didn’t show the leadership you wanted?
SINGLETARY: If I had to make the decision again, Alex would be my
quarterback at the beginning of the season. If I had to make that
decision, hands down, no question about it.
ANALYSIS: Who can argue? Based on offseason decision-making, the other choices were David Carr, Nate Davis and Troy Smith, who arrived six days before the season opener.
MURPHY: And finally the last thing he said about middle
linebackers versus quarterbacks, the mentality of leadership. Do you
agree with him? That those are different views of leadership. That you
and he just come from different parts of the football world and that you’ll never
fully agree on what leadership is because you played a different
position from (him)?
SINGLETARY: You know what, I’m going to leave that statement
right there because I think I understand what he’s saying, but before I
sit here and try to analyze it over the phone, I’ll just talk to him.
But it really doesn’t matter because Alex and I have talked about
leadership a lot. We’ve talked about leadership more than I’ve talked
about leadership with anyone. So we’ve had a number of conversations,
but this is not the time for me to try and analyze what he meant by
that.
ANALYSIS: Don’t know what to add here. They have discussed leadership a lot, but they have never discussed their contrasting views of leadership. Regardless, it really doesn’t matter.
MURPHY: … Going forward now, we don’t know who your quarterback
is for Sunday and you’re going to keep everyone monitored as the week
goes on …
SINGLETARY: But it will be the quarterback who gives us the best chance to win.
ANALYSIS: Yes, Smith.
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