Vernon Davis was sent to the locker room during the 49ers’ 34-13 loss to Seattle in October 2008, Mike Singletary’s first game as head coach, and Singletary’s postgame comments about the tight end became widely known. Speaking on All the Smoke, Davis described how he saw that moment at the time and how his view of Singletary changed in the years that followed.

“At the time, I was like, man, this dude throwing me under the bus,” Vernon Davis said. “I was like, man, this is crazy. I was like, man, they about to get rid of me. And now, you know, being older, you know, myself and, you know, just thinking back about it, I think it’s something that I deserve.”

Mike Singletary has never been shy about what he expects, and Vernon Davis found that out in front of everyone. During a 34-13 loss to Seattle, the tight end took a swipe at Seahawks safety Brian Russell’s facemask after a seven-yard catch in the third quarter. The 15-yard penalty was bad enough. What happened next was worse.

Davis tried to dodge Singletary on the way back to the sideline, but the coach got in his face and sent him to the bench, then to the locker room with over 10 minutes left.

What bothered Singletary most was the nonchalant look he saw from Davis, and he didn’t hold back when explaining it.

“It’s something I told players at the beginning of the week. I will not tolerate players who think it is about them and not the team. We can’t make decisions that cost the team, and then come off the sidelines, and it’s nonchalant. I’d rather play with 10 people and just get penalized all the way until we have to do something else. Rather than play with 11, when I know that right now, that person is not sold out to be part of the team. It’s more about them than it is the team. You can not play with them. You can not win with them. You can not coach with them; you can’t do it. I want winners. I want people who want to win.”

Davis, for his part, took it in stride.

“Coach Singletary told me to go sit down, and after a while, he told me to just take a shower and take it in,” he said. “He’s a good coach. Coach Singletary is an emotional guy, just like myself. He wants to win, and I did exactly what he told me to do. He is the head coach, and I listen to him. He just told me to come in, and I went in.”

The moment fit a pattern that had followed Davis for years. He dropped passes, ran the wrong routes, and talked a bigger game than he played.

Things did turn around, though. In 2008, he played and started all 16 games, catching 31 passes on 49 targets for 358 yards and two touchdowns. The very next season, he jumped to 78 catches, 965 yards and 13 touchdowns, which earned him his first Pro Bowl selection.

Years later, Davis looked back on it all while talking with Josh Petry on the Hoodie Chroniclez Podcast.

“A guy like Mike Singletary was essential for me because he helped me figure it out and find that lane that I was looking for. The biggest thing that I wanted was to be a leader on the team that I was playing on, and that was the San Francisco 49ers. He helped me turn that thing around and be everything that they wanted me to be.”

Davis stayed in San Francisco until November 2015, when the 49ers traded him and a 2016 seventh-round pick to Denver for sixth-round picks in 2016 and 2017. That ended his run with the team that drafted him, about seven years after that sideline blowup.