San Francisco coach Mike Singletary gets serious after the pants saga

Say the words "Mike Singletary" to any NFL enthusiast and you will find the reactions broadly split along generational lines. To those old enough to remember the championship-winning Chicago Bears team of 1985 he is Samurai Mike, the wild-eyed leader of a defence so ferocious they came to be known as the Monsters of the Midway. To children of the 90s, on the other hand, he is Coach Singletary, the one who pulled his trousers down. Promoted to interim head coach of the San Francisco 49ers after Mike Nolan was sacked seven games into the 2008 season, Singletary wasted no time making an impression. In the first half of his head coaching debut – a 34-13 loss to the Seattle Seahawks – Singletary benched the then starting quarterback JT O'Sullivan. In the second he sent the starting tight end and former first-round draft pick Vernon Davis to the locker room after a furious sideline exchange. "I want winners. I want people who want to win," Singletary raged in a now infamous post-game press conference . And then the news started to filter through: during an even more colourful half-time speech the coach had apparently turned around and exposed his bottom to his players. An air-conditioned room in the NFL's international office in London provides a rather less emotionally charged setting. Singletary is relaxed, at ease and perhaps even a little bit worn out from an intensive schedule of media interviews, though behind puffy lids his eyes still burn with an intensity undimmed since his playing days. He is here to promote the 49ers' fixture against the Denver Broncos at Wembley, but knows very well that he will be asked to relive that debut more than once before he returns Stateside. There is a sense, though, that even now Singletary can't quite understand what all the fuss is about. "It's one thing when you drop your pants, but it's another when people don't explain what's underneath them," he says. "Everybody says 'coach dropped his pants' and of course when I heard from my wife she said 'did you have underwear on?' Well, come on now, you know I've got underwear on. It's the thought process I struggle with. Guys walk around in jockstraps in the locker room, while women are walking around in there too. So what? "It was an amazing thing to me but I learnt a tremendous amount that first day. You learn what you can do, you learn what you can't do. I remember looking at the eyes of the reporters and it was like 'this guy … is really different'. I was just being me. But there are things that I have to continue to refine. Bob [Lange, the 49ers' director of public relations] is tremendous at helping me do those things and I'm very thankful for him. But I wouldn't change one thing from that day." Lange can't speak highly enough about Singletary. It is his job to do so, of course, but having spent eight years with the Philadelphia Eagles before moving to San Francisco in 2009, Lange has experience of working with a huge number of players and coaches, and yet claims to have been startled by how ready Singletary was to take on board his suggestions. A subsequent conversation with the San Francisco's co-owner, John York, supports Lange's claim that Singletary is both a keen listener and an relentless note-taker. "I am always listening, I am always learning," Singletary says, "because too many times in life there's just one person that I met, just one thing that I heard, one movie that I saw, one song that was sung, that changed my life. So I'm always trying to stay awake to be in the moment, and capture the moments when they come, because they come and go all the time." In his early life Singletary had no choice but to sit and observe. His mother, who had already had several miscarriages, was advised by doctors in the early stages of pregnancy to have an abortion due to the high risk of complications. Opposed on religious grounds, she refused. Singletary was born very frail, spending much of his first eight years confined to bed with various ailments. Even when he did leave the house in those years he was almost never allowed to play with the other children and usually got left to wait in the car. "It's something when you can't play with the other kids," Singletary says, yet even at that age he was determined to find a positive. "I learned how to think. I remember just lying on the ground and looking at the clouds for hours and just sitting there, thinking. Looking out of a window and watching the other kids, whatever it might be. Sometimes maybe there's a lesson in it when you see things from a distance. People arguing, people fighting, and thinking how would you do it differently." Singletary was nine or 10 when his mother finally told him about the doctors' abortion advice, informing him that he was not only destined to live but "that there was greatness in me, that there was something special I would bring". He deflects a question about whether that "something" was American football, but greatness is something he demands from all around him. In the kitchen of his family's home hangs a mission statement that begins: "This is the home of champions. As Singletarys we will always strive to do our very best in all we do." But his team right now are a long way from being champions of anything. This was supposed to be the 49ers' year, an opportunity to return to the play-offs for the first time since the 2002 season. Although they finished runners-up in the NFC West last year, they had beaten the team that finished ahead of them, the Arizona Cardinals, twice, and had finished the season strongly, winning three of their last four games. With the Cardinals losing their quarterback Kurt Warner to retirement, the division was there for the taking. But while the Cardinals have stuttered – and their fellow division rivals the Seattle Seahawks and St Louis Rams have been no better – the 49ers have imploded, losing their first five games. A win over the Oakland Raiders last weekend may have stopped the rot but the play-offs already look a distant dream. The firing of offensive co-ordinator Jimmy Raye after the week-four defeat to the Atlanta Falcons may have bought Singletary some time, but his position is under threat. That puts an even greater onus on Sunday's game in London. The 49ers gave up one of their home games to play at Wembley and can ill afford to drop another game at this stage, especially against a Denver Broncos team who themselves have won just two of their first five games. "I'm excited about it. I think our players are excited about it, it's a tremendous opportunity," he says. "The challenge will just be for our guys to stay focused." Well, that and tracking down some winners. Some people who want to win.