You remember his eyes, right? Those crazed saucers behind a Bears face mask that would have made Jim Brown cower in his cleats and run like mad for the sideline?

Singletary can still stare a hole through the best of them, and right now the NFL desperately needs a middle linebacker willing to blitz the notion that today's professional athletes are the ones who get to write the game-day rules.

Sure, Sunday's news conference rant is destined to be joined at the YouTube hip with those delivered by Denny Green ("They were who we thought they were"), Jim Mora ("Playoffs?") and that Rhodes Scholar from Oklahoma State ("Come after me. I'm a man. I'm 40."). But that would be doing Singletary's message a grave injustice.

Green, Mora and Mike Gundy were rebels without much of a cause. As the interim coach of the San Francisco 49ers who didn't even need four quarters to send a self-serving player to the showers, Singletary wasn't just melting down over a quarterback or newspaper column he didn't like.

He was putting an entire culture on notice, a culture that serves the unholy trinity of Me, Myself and I.

Singletary arrived just in the nick of time, too — just when it was becoming clear that coaches and franchises were losing the war of wills with a generation of athletes committed to following the zigs and zags of their own playbooks.

Vernon Davis hardly committed a mortal sin when he poked at the face mask of Seahawks safety Brian Russell. When measured against other public acts of NFL insubordination, it qualified as a traffic violation, nothing more.

NFL Week 9

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Analysis

• O'Connor: Singletary takes on culture


• Schrager: Week 9 Cheat Sheet


• Hasenmayer: NFL power rankings



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• Week 8: What we learned

Singletary didn't see it that way. The 15 yards didn't bother him as much as the cavalier way Davis carried himself in the wake of the penalty. The coach had held recent conversations with the tight end about sharpening his focus and honoring the talent that made him the sixth overall pick of the 2006 draft. Davis assured Singletary he was ready to do the one-for-all, all-for-one thing and then went out and betrayed his own pledge.

"To me he crossed the line," Singletary said the other day.

Davis crossed the line because his boss had the nerve to draw one.

"What did I do?" Singletary quoted Davis as asking him.

"What did you do?" the coach responded. "What do you mean? Look out there. There it is. That's what you did. ... You're done."

When Davis started getting loud and antsy around the bench, Singletary decided the tight end would neither be seen nor heard. "Now you've got to go," he told him.

The sight of Singletary kicking Davis off the field was one to behold. It came on the same day Tom Coughlin, Super Bowl champ, again showed alarming weakness by allowing Plaxico Burress to participate in the Giants' victory over the Steelers in Pittsburgh.

Yes, Coughlin removed Burress from the starting lineup for missing a scheduled therapy session on his injured neck. And yes, Coughlin did suspend Burress for the Giants' romp over the Seahawks.

But that suspension came only after Burress was fined as many as four dozen times, and only after he skipped work without even notifying the team of the extreme emergency that kept him from his appointed rounds — he had to take his son to school.

Though he was best known for his despotic approach in Jacksonville, Coughlin, the Giant, has always struggled to control Burress. In the early days, Coughlin even sought Tiki Barber's counsel on how to deal with a receiver who kept pulling himself out of practice.

Truth is, Burress should've been suspended long before this year's Seattle game. He should've been given the Vernon Davis treatment after he cursed at Coughlin during the Giants' victory over the 49ers. And he never should've touched the Heinz Field grass early in the second quarter, not when his actions cost him any right to appear in what was his homecoming game.

But the league has grown soft on its disruptive Manny-being-Manny types. The Giants put up with Jeremy Shockey's garbage for far too long before shipping him off to the Saints. In Kansas City, Larry Johnson needed tougher love before it was too late. In Cincinnati, Marvin Lewis lost the battle to Ocho Cinco. In Dallas, Jerry Jones was too weak to do the right thing and pay the necessary price by suspending Pacman Jones; the commissioner had to do it for him.

The Cowboys had better hope Terrell Owens doesn't try to bring them down the way he brought down the Eagles, for Wade Phillips isn't the man to quell that uprising.

The 49ers don't have the same worry, not anymore. Though Mike Nolan was said to have gone out of his way to protect Davis, who reportedly made a habit of fighting teammates in practice, Singletary went out of his way to hit Davis from the blind side.

"I'm just not going to tolerate anyone that is not respectful," the interim coach said. "I'm not going to tolerate anyone that's taking away from the team. I'm not going to tolerate ... anyone (who) believes they're above the team.

"This is going to be a safe place. It's going to be a great place to come and work. It's going to be a clean place, and it's really going to be something special. I believe when it's all said and done, the NFL will look at the 49ers as a team and they'll say, 'Wow, they're doing it right.'"

Every right-minded listener wanted to say amen to that.

Singletary wasn't just promising a new and improved work environment in San Francisco; he was also warning other franchises of ballplayers who needed to be driven out of their locker rooms.

"Every team has them," Singletary said.

If team elders don't act to shut down these me-firsters, the coach added, "those guys will continue to eat at your team until they eat at the very soul of the team."

No, Singletary doesn't need Condi Rice to take over as 49ers president, and he sure doesn't need Mike Holmgren to come in and take his job.

One game in, Singletary has already proven he knows how to lead. The NFL needs more men like him.