This is what it comes to?Matt Stafford is probably the best quarterback available in the upcoming NFL draft. I mean, throwing for 3,500 yards and 25 touchdowns last year for the University of Georgia, is the kind of stuff that NFL coaches usually dream about.
But not Mike Singletary over at the San Francisco 49ers. And why? Because Stafford gave the "wrong answer" to a team psychologist who was interviewing him.
Huh?
I bet you find it a little freaky just to know that a professional football team employs a psychologist. I do.
Nevertheless, I'm sure you're still curious about what dark secret Stafford revealed in this psycho-session that so bothered Singletary -- bothered him so badly that he went out and publicly criticized Stafford and pledged not to draft him even if they had the chance?
The answer? None whatsoever. Indeed, what infuriated Singletary was what Stafford wouldn't reveal to the team's wannabe shrink; namely, the gritty, soul-baring details about his parent's divorce.
In the session, the psychologist asked Stafford about his parent's divorce (the kid was a teenager when it happened) and Stafford briefly explained the adjustments he had made to deal with the matter. But, even as psychiatrists sometimes do, let alone mere psychologists (the less-trained, less-sophisticated junior varsity in the "mind game"), the guy couldn't let the thing go. He didn't know Matt Stafford. Stafford wasn't his patient or friend or even acquaintance. But still he figured he knew more about what was going on in Stafford's head than Stafford did. Thus, he dismissed Stafford's remark and persisted in his questioning about the "unfinished business" that must surely be there.
Stafford later joked, "I felt like, I wonder how much I'm being charged per hour for this?"
In keeping his head (no pun intended), Matt Stafford showed he wasn't crazy or maladjusted. Quite the opposite, in drawing a line between the 49ers legitimate purposes and a punk psychologist's inappropriate, even arrogant, probing, Stafford was being eminently sane, stable, and responsible.
No, it turned out the craziness was exhibited by 49ers coach Mike Singletary who decided Stafford lacked the mental stability to be on his team. Singletary had the audacity to tell a San Francisco radio audience, "If you're going to look at drafting a guy in the first round, and you're going to pay him millions of dollars, and asking him about a divorce, about his parents, if that's going to be an issue, uhhh, then you know what? Maybe he doesn't belong here."Keep in mind that this comes from a fellow whose locker room pep talk last season included dropping his pants.
If the 49er franchise is truly concerned about protecting the organization from the maladjusted, they should start with the head cases they've already got.