Steve Young and the 49ers don't usually take defeat sitting down.

This isn't the way the San Francisco 49ers used to operate, Young said. All this paying attention to the salary cap instead of just figuring out which players the team needed the most and then devising some grand scheme to underwrite the operation -- how gauche. How declasse.

That calculated sort of madness, where you somehow found a way to stuff a Deion Sanders into the coach's stocking for Christmas -- that was the 49ers of old. This bottom-line conscious, money-drives-the-decision, tentative-to-the-point-of-invisibility approach -- this is the 49ers of new.

And you know what that makes Steve Young?

Disappointed, is what.

Well, expensive and disappointed.

And, Mr. Young, you've come to the right place. Disappointment is what we're all about -- not usually, of course, but for today, and deeply so. Disappointment is the only appropriate sentiment on display Monday night in Atlanta, which can mean only one thing: The 49ers and the Atlanta Falcons are closing out their tremendously deflating seasons against one another.

So they are -- but, hey, enough about that game! Let's talk about disappointment, since no NFL season is complete without it. For every Kurt Warner this season, there was a Dan Marino, a person of whom greater things were expected, regardless of what reason and sober judgment might have suggested.

It's hard to call Marino a disappointment when his team stayed in the playoff picture throughout the schedule, ups and downs alike. On the other hand, people looked at the Miami Dolphins in August and saw a team that, with Jimmy Johnson coaching and Marino at the helm, might be making its final thrust at a Super Bowl appearance under the future Hall of Fame quarterback.

The reality: Marino has been injured and sometimes maddeningly ineffective. Johnson clearly has wavered in his support of the man. The Dolphins, at times, looked significantly better working behind backup Damon Huard. And that Super Bowl thing just doesn't ring true right about now.

But that's football. Just ask Atlanta: The Falcons came into this season fresh off their first NFC Championship, looking like a solid threat to put away their second straight NFC West title. It was a lovely little daydream.

The reality: Jamal Anderson, out for the year. Chris Chandler, lost for huge chunks of the season. Dan Reeves, having absolutely no fun. And the Falcons, seemingly a world removed from their own success of a year ago, slopping through this 4-11 mud-bog.

The 49ers disappointed the world, but at least no one saw it coming. What San Francisco learned from Young's concussion-forced absence is that in a salary-capped world, one good player really can be the difference between competitiveness and sheer rancidity.

The Jets get a special citation for being disappointing in what proved to be Bill Parcells' final year, if only because they came together strongly enough as the season wore on to make New York fans wonder out loud what they might have become with Vinny Testaverde at quarterback. Instead, it was 8-8 and adios -- even if the Jets might have been one of the strongest teams in the AFC at the end of the regular schedule.

And thus we have even more disappointments:

Disappointing Discovery: Ricky Williams was everything that Mike Ditka said he would be, and it didn't make a damned bit of difference. The 'Aints wuz still the 'Aints.

Disappointing Collapse: New England under now-former coach Pete Carroll. Not the first time this has happened under Carroll, merely the worst. From 6-2 to 8-8 and out of the postseason, and in disgraceful fashion, with players looking like they quit on Carroll a couple of weeks ago in a loss at Philly.

Disappointing Appointment: Ray Rhodes as head coach of the Packers, a dubious choice from the get-go and a match that appeared to disintegrate as the season wore on. After a victory in San Diego in the season's second month pushed their record to 4-2, Green Bay went 4-6 down the stretch and couldn't win the game it needed to put itself into the driver's seat for the playoffs.

The Pack gave up that postseason spot to Dallas, for cripes' sake. This one is on Ron Wolf, the man who hired Rhodes to replace the departed Mike Holmgren. Give Wolf credit for needing less than a full season to realize the extent of his mistake.

See? Disappointment everywhere you look. And we didn't even get to the Broncos, the Steelers, Jake Plummer, Ryan Leaf and a whole host of other teams and individuals who, for reasons both within and out of their control, didn't live up to expectations.

It figures: You put 31 teams out there, you're practically ensuring that a substantial handful will be upset in all the wrong ways by season's end.

The good news: St. Louis. Indianapolis. Tennessee. Minnesota, with what it overcame to get to 10-6. Jacksonville, 14-2 and with home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.

And there's your case study, the Jaguars. Lost two games all season and hit the playoffs with the best record in football, yet their campaign was one seemingly uninterrupted discussion of their shortcomings, their offensive liabilities, their ordinary play against winning teams and the like.

You could even say that some people looked at the Jags this year and were disappointed with what they saw. It's ludicrous, but it's true. And in the season of the big letdown, it fits.

Mark Kreidler is a columnist for the Sacramento Bee, which has a web site at http://www.sacbee.com/. During the 1999 NFL season, he will write a weekly column for ESPN.com, focusing on the Monday Night Football matchup.