Does Nolan need to coach? Only he can answer that

There is no real way to understand Mike Nolan's decision to coach tonight's 49ers-Seahawks game a day after the death of his father. You just nod and say, "Well, if that's how he needs to grieve ..."

Mike Nolan has been going through a rough time lately. (Getty Images)

Yet there's something in the back of that head that wonders how good an idea that really is, and whether this is a decision that Nolan should get to make on his own. Under normal circumstances, for example, someone would have told Nolan, "This isn't a good idea. Your dad had other family -- go be with them. They need you. You need them."

But these aren't normal circumstances, because nothing about football is truly normal. And who would know that more than the Nolan family?

One suspects Mike Nolan never gave skipping the game much thought, in part because it probably would never have been allowed by Dick Nolan. One imagines Mike Nolan has played this scenario out in his head a thousand times, wondering what his father, the prototypical coaching lifer from a generation when toughness in the face of tragedy was the only allowable coping mechanism, would want.

And of course, this would be it. To do the job, to finish the week. He may even have spoken to his father about it ... we don't know.

But we do know there was no hesitation. Dick Nolan died Sunday after a long bout with Alzheimer's and prostate cancer, and with the press release was notification that Mike Nolan would coach the 49ers against Seattle. Period.

Now, Mike Nolan has known far better times. His father was dying in slow motion. His team is below struggling. His coaching head is being demanded by a widening number of fans and media. The 49ers' mess is his mess, and you know how open-minded fans are in such times. It is their job to be loudly unreasonable in these moments, and they almost never fail.

But one wonders where they'll be if the 49ers lose to the Seahawks tonight. One wonders, in fact, if they'll decide that Nolan will get a pass given the circumstances.

We suspect not, of course. What is more likely to happen is that he will be faulted for coaching at all. With his having missed three days to be with his father (albeit days after the game prep has been pretty well completed), they will complain that the matter of the Seahawks should have been left to assistant head coach Mike Singletary, that Nolan chose wrongly again.

Sigh.

Perhaps we're wrong here. Perhaps this will be a week in which the fans take more of a stab at understanding the Nolan family dynamic, and let the game of pounding the coach go.

But we doubt it. There are only 16 of these events in a year, and every one takes an enormously outsized role. And there is nothing in sports quite like a town whose football team is going bad, which is so dramatically undershooting expectations. The mood is ugly, the demand for retribution and even punishment is louder and more barbed.

That is the atmosphere surrounding the 49ers; unlike the Raiders, whose fans are deep in the throes of resignation after yet another hideous performance. There, hope died awhile ago.