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SINGLETARY WANTS TO GET RID OF “CANCERS”
Posted by Mike Florio on October 27, 2008, 3:51 p.m.

As it turns out, Sunday’s eye-popping postgame press conference from new 49ers coach Mike Singletary was preceded by an even more fiery locker-room speech, during which Singletary promised to rid the team of “cancers.”

“There are some people in this room that don’t need to be here,” Singletary told the team, according to Michael Silver of Yahoo! Sports. “We’ve got guys in here that are cancers. The thing about cancer cells is, they multiply. We’ve got to cut them out.”

One of the tumors apparently is tight end Vernon Davis, whom Singletary booted after Davis was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct.

“You don’t need to be sayin’ nothin’ to me right now,” Davis reportedly said as Singletary was in the process of chewing the third-year player out for his error.

“I said I don’t need to hear it,” Davis said.

And that’s when Singletary told the sixth overall pick in the 2006 draft to hit the showers.

One veteran defensive player praised the move to Silver: “Vernon does this crap all the time, and [former coach Mike] Nolan would always let it go. He created this monster.”

We also think that “this monster” was created in part by a rookie wage system that makes an annual handful of players untouchable during the early stages of their careers, since their teams can’t afford to take the cap hit that would result from cutting them. Time and again we’ve heard rumblings that players who waltz into the locker room as multi-multi-millionaires often can’t be coached or mentored, because they simply refuse to listen.

Because they know that, no matter what happens, they aren’t going anywhere.

The strangest aspect of Nolan’s reputation for going easy on the players is that he was, by all appearances, a butthole when it came to his dealings with the front office. Even after G.M. Scot McCloughan persuaded ownership to give Nolan another chance at coaching the team after Nolan’s authority over personnel had been transferred to McCloughan, Nolan boasted at the press conference announcing the move that “I will remain the one voice in this organization, and the face.”

Well, the organization now has a new voice, and a new face. And his first order of business apparently will be to undo the damage Nolan caused by tolerating guys who aren’t committed to the goal of winning via teamwork.

That said, where was Singletary before he became the head coach? Was he privately lobbying Nolan to engage in some organizational oncology, or was Singletary simply keeping his mouth shut, waiting and hoping for the whole thing to fall apart so that he’d get his chance to put it all back together?