Has Singletary lost his players respect? By David Zizmor September 27, 2010     SANTA CLARA-- The players have not soured on 49ers head coach Michael Singletary just yet and Singletary still has the ears of the players that they certainly like him or they're motivated by him. At the same time we saw it come to a boil in this game against Kansas City and there was a lot of play calling of former 49ers offensive coach Jimmy Raye. As everyone knows Singletary has said himself that he's not an offensive guy, he really doesn't know very much about offense he's not an x's and o's guy on offense he's a defense first guy first and he sees all the offensive play calling to his offensive guys. So the coordinators, quarterbacks coaches, whoever those are the guys who are in charge of the play calling are getting everyone ready for the offense. Singletary obviously has culpability simply because he's the head coach and he hires these guys and he kind of comes up with an overall plan but Singletary isn't involved in the nitty gritty play calling details on the offensive side of the football and Raye was the offensive coordinator and most of the players especially in the game against Kansas City seems very upset with the play calling. It just seems that Raye's playbook was 50 ways to run straight ahead into the line, there was absolutely no rhyme or reason to his play calling. It wasn't dictated by the game situation it was simply dictated by the idea they wanted to run the ball professionally and they were going to stop at nothing to do it and it didn't matter how successful they were. They thought just because they were successful the first, three, or four times that they would be successful the ten or 20th time. That simply was not the case, teams were able to stop the Niners on offense. That might not be necessarily 100% Jimmy Raye's fault but that might be in part because of limitations that they have at quarterback. They never opened up that offense, if the run wasn't working they didn't switch over to the passing game and that's what you have to do if one thing doesn't work you try something else until you find something else that does work. The Niners weren't doing it and they kept trying to do the same exact thing hoping it would work and never succeeded. The only time they changed was with five minutes left in the game when their was no chance of winning. So that was the big problem and let's face it the Niners were under the microscope because of their offense, because of quarterback Alex Smith and because of his long history with the team. Raye wasn't doing Smith any favors, yes Frank Gore is a great running back but Gore can't make 50 yards out of nothing. It's just quite simply you have to make the plays and if the plays your calling don't work switch it up. Early in the game passing was working a little bit for the 49ers and their running game was not there at all even from the first play and the passing game while it wasn't working great down field they were able to get five or ten yards chunks here and there. On the flip side with the Niners were laying on the ball the Kansas City defense was sitting there waiting for them and in fact reports were coming out after the game that the Kansas City defense was actually calling out the 49ers plays before they snapped the ball. So the 49ers offense becomes so predictable that even Kansas City defense knew exactly was coming and if you know whats coming their going to stop it, it's just as simple as that. This isn't rocket science here this is football and if you know their going to run it straight up the gut your going to be able to stop them from running straight up the gut. A lot of football is tricking the defense and thinking your doing one thing and then doing something else and Jimmy Raye simply could not do that. David Zizmor files the 49ers report each week for Sportstalk Radio

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