Mike Singletary is in England, and he’s channeling Winston Churchill.
Asked whether his San Francisco 49ers can achieve the success that the franchise achieved in the days of Joe Montana and Jerry Rice, Singletary waxed philosophical about what the future may hold for his club.
“The one thing I don’t do is spend much time thinking about what was,” Singletary said. “I spend a lot of time thinking about the possibilities ahead of us. I talked to the team this morning and one of the things that I told them, and that I will tell you, is this is our finest hour as a team, and as a staff. When things are going very well, it’s very easy to be a great coach, very easy to be a great player, but when things are not going the way you want them to go, it’s tougher, and not only that, but its giving us an opportunity to really look at where we are, and be able to understand it for what it is.”
Of course, most people would look at the 49ers’ 1-6 record and say that it demonstrates the team’s inability to be great when things aren’t going their way. Singletary, a Hall of Famer who was the linchpin of one of the best teams in NFL history, knows as well as anyone that it’s not easy at all.
But Singletary insists that there are good and reasonable hopes of final victory.
“Some teams may not have a very good record right now, and for whatever reason there’s not a lot that they can do about it,” Singletary said. “We can, and when you lose close games, on one end of it, it looks like wow, you know, what’s the reason that you can’t win the close ones, but there are always two sides to every coin. There’s a reason why you’re close, and we just have to get to that point to where we win those.”
Singletary is an inspiring orator, but as Churchill found out in 1945, that’s not always enough for a leader to keep his job.