"In 35 minutes of Monday rehashery, Mike Singletary never addressed his defense. He never had to. Nobody was interested, or interested enough, maybe not even him.

Or maybe he just runs with what is thrown at him, and what people want to throw at him now is the spread offense.

Singletary was hit in every way possible with questions about employing the spread immediately, so that Alex Smith could be more comfortable, Michael Crabtree could be more productive, Vernon Davis could be more happy, and the angels would sing all the way through Christmas.

Evidently, Frank Gore's happiness is no longer important, or at the very least fashionable.

But never mind happiness. Consider instead the larger picture, which Singletary himself hinted at a couple of times early in his news conference - that the offensive line in its present state is not yet trustworthy enough to keep Smith upright in any offense.

And the even larger picture, that the 49ers' 22nd-ranked defense isn't much better than its 27th-ranked offense. Evidently, if the 49ers can throw the ball, it doesn't much matter that the other teams can throw at them with even greater ease.

So that's just how it's going to be. The offense isn't suited to the personnel, or it isn't suited to Singletary's biorhythms, or both - which, intriguingly enough, is exactly what was said back in August when the 49ers were going to be a running team.

It seems clear, as opposed to superficially noticeable, that the 49ers still lack sufficient personnel to run any offense well enough if their defense isn't going to be half as good as it needs to be.

"We're a team, in my mind, we're good enough to do that (make the playoffs)," Singletary said. "We're running out of games and we're running out of time, but we are better."

"Better," though, is a relative term, and in this case, inaccurate. What the 49ers are is different. They were a run-first team with Shaun Hill at quarterback. With Smith, they are better with the ball in the air.

Only Smith is by most amateur analyses better in the shotgun formation and used to throwing with four wide-outs all day long, and the fact is the 49ers don't really have four quality wide-outs or the offensive line to block long enough to allow Smith to find them.

If those things were true, Singletary wouldn't be so resistant to rolling the offense over to keep Smith and Crabtree and Davis happy, let alone soothing the disgruntled masses demanding the immediate absorption of Urban Meyer's playbook.

But he hinted at his reservations when he dropped this tidbit in a long dissertation about the spread:

"I think the biggest thing for him is having time," Singletary said. "I think that's the most important thing for him. It's to have time. I think one of the worst things that we could do right now is to put Alex Smith in shotgun and say, 'OK, let's go get it, guys. Here's what it is,' and just let him throw 40, 50 times a game, and let's see where you end up."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/24/SP5A1APANK.DTL#ixzz0XmL1WiPX"