When the 49ers fired Nolan on Monday, Gore had an emotional chat with the man who drafted him and then nurtured his emergence as an elite player. After his first practice Wednesday under interim coach Mike Singletary, Gore was ready to move on by building on Nolan's foundation.

"It was tough, especially (when) it's the coach that drafted you," said Gore, third in the NFL with 781 total yards from scrimmage. "He saw me grow into a man. ... He just told me I had to keep it up, and we're still a great team that has a chance to be in the playoffs this year."

Nolan either drafted or signed 46 of the 53 players on the 49ers' roster. Most still had good things to say about Nolan as they began preparations for Sunday's home game against Seattle, including praise for Nolan's ability to keep his team together during their four-game losing streak.

"I think the locker room was still intact," linebacker Takeo Spikes said. "He still had the ear of everybody. I can say that because I've been in locker rooms where they've tuned the head coach out, and they were just waiting for the season to be over."

Some players won't be quite as sorry about Nolan's departure. Although Alex Smith publicly made up with Nolan this year, their embarrassing public spat in 2007 over the severity of Smith's arm injury compounded the 49ers' difficult season and dealt a serious blow to the former No. 1 draft pick's career, which might be over in San Francisco anyway. Smith is on injured reserve again this year.

But any residual frustration with Nolan was expressed through praise of Singletary, the Hall of Fame linebacker and Nolan's assistant head coach.

"Just listening to a guy that played the game we play, you know that they know what they're talking about when they show that intensity," right tackle Jonas Jennings said. "When a coach can say from his own experience, this is what we need to be a championship team, you listen to that."

Jennings was Nolan's first big-money free agent signing in 2005, but Nolan's projected left tackle has missed 32 of his 55 games in San Francisco with a variety of injuries, including a separated shoulder that will keep him out of his sixth straight game Sunday. Nolan seemed to sour on Jennings as the injuries piled up, but Jennings has no ill will.

"It's bad, but we all know it's a cutthroat business," Jennings said. "You don't wish nothing bad on anybody, but it's going to happen to all of us one day. ... I think (Singletary) follows what coach Nolan was already teaching with a double scoop of intensity."

Singletary gave an emotional speech after Wednesday's practice, yelling about the joys of playing football in January after most teams are finished for the season. His powerful voice could be heard from two practice fields over, even with the entire San Francisco team huddled up around him.

"He's a great speaker," said Spikes, who weighed Singletary's presence in San Francisco when he chose to sign with the Niners last August. "If you put him in front of a bunch of guys who didn't even want to play football, after five minutes they'd have their helmet and be ready to play. That's what kind of a speaker he is."

Singletary spent the 36 hours since his hiring in a whirlwind of game-planning and interviews, but he thinks the 49ers have enough time to prepare for Sunday's meeting with the Seahawks.

"It's very humbling," Singletary said before his first walkthrough as head coach. "It's a little bit strange not to have Mike (Nolan) to talk to about different issues, but at the same time, I know the promise I made to him, and that's to take the team to the next level."

Although Singletary doesn't say exactly what's on that next level, he'll have to forge a working relationship with offensive coordinator Mike Martz to get anywhere. Martz, the longtime St. Louis Rams coach who joined Nolan's staff last January, was bypassed for the top job by San Francisco's front office.

Martz has restored respectability this season to the NFL's worst offense in two of the past three years, although quarterback J.T. O'Sullivan has been inconsistent while getting sacked a league-high 29 times.

"I'm going to stay the heck out of the way and let Mike do his job," Singletary said.

Martz has been an NFL coach since 1992, the same year Singletary's playing career ended. Even Singletary, who entered coaching in 2003, isn't sure how the relationship will work, but he's confident in Martz's professionalism.

"I went in (Tuesday) to talk to him, and he said, 'Well, what do you want to talk about? Why do you want to talk about that?"' Singletary said. "We had fun going through that, and I'm enjoying him. It's just a matter of he and I continuing to get to know each other, but he knows that I trust him to do the things that he has to do."