Mike Martz Is a Big Fan of Casting Aspersions in the General Direction of His Quarterbacks

When you hear 49ers offensive coordinator Mike Martz in an interview, he sounds like a reasonable, extremely intelligent football mind. Apparently, he's also an awesome actor. Because once he steps on the field, It's Mr. Hyde time.

Cardinals starting quarterback Kurt Warner regaled the San Francisco media with stories of what playing for Martz entailed during their time together in St. Louis. Basically, it was a one-way conversation involving Martz denigrating his quarterbacks. Sounds like a lot of fun.

Which segues nicely into to this revelation from Yahoo's Michael Silver (via Niner Insider):

Mike Silver at Yahoo sports wrote a provocative story about the 49ers' quarterback situation. According to sources cited by Silver, offensive coordinator Mike Martz would muttered aspersions at [Alex] Smith after feeding him a play at practice. And daily, he buried Shaun Hill in meetings. All this suggests that Martz wanted [J.T.] O'Sullivan to be the starter all along and made sure that it happened.

Eh, I'm not sure this is evidence Martz wanted O'Sullivan to win the job. Instead, as Warner pointed out, Martz is just a perfectionist who also happens to be a humongous a-hole. I'm guessing if either Smith or Hill had played better, they would be starting right now. As it turns out, they were less impressive than a journeyman and Smith's days are likely numbered.

As as Niners Insider Kevin Lynch writes, "At some point, it's all about performance. O'Sullivan was the best quarterback in training camp practices and preseason games." And for head coach Mike Nolan and Martz, that point was two weeks ago when they announced O'Sullivan had won the gig.

On the upside, Warner admitted that no defenses knew how to defend Martz's downfield scheme during the 1999 season (not without cheating, and that took Bill Belichick more than a year to figure out), so that's potentially encouraging news for the 49ers. Well, if you're willing to overlook Martz's inglorious stint in Detroit, anyway.