SINGLETARY ADDRESSES REPORTS OF HIS JOB STATUS

Amid rumors and reports that the 49ers will make interim coach Mike Singletary their permanent head coach (that is, as permanent as any head coach ever is) as soon as Monday, and that his first order of business will be to fire offensive coordinator Mike Martz, Singletary addressed the situation on Friday. “Because of all of the controversy about it and all of the distractions that it’s had on our team already,” Singletary said at a press conference, “I just came in this morning and I got our team together first thing this morning and just told them, ‘You know what guys? All the speculation, all of the talk, whatever, we want to focus on Washington and all of the other things we’ll talk about and think about later.’ But I really don’t want to comment on that right now. I just really want to focus on Washington and everything else will take care of itself. It will happen soon enough.” Singletary was asked whether he’d spoken with Martz about the situation. “Very little,” Singletary said. “We talked a little bit about it but no big deal.” And so he was asked whether it is “human nature” to think about Singletary’s situation. And Singletary snapped, a little bit. “You know what? Here we go,” he said. “I’m going to stay on Washington. I’m really going to stay on Washington. We’ve had too much of a distraction from it already this week really trying to keep the guys focused on . . . you had Christmas, you had Christmas Eve, you had shopping, you had all of the other things. I want to get these guys back and have them totally focused on Washington, and we need to go forward with that.”