SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Once few and far between, the losses are coming one after another for the San Francisco 49ers.

THE UGLY NUMBERS

Numbers to note in the San Francisco 49ers' fall: Zero: The number of NFL teams besides the 49ers with back-to-back losses to the New Orleans Saints and Pittsburgh Steelers. Those also happen to be the only teams in the league with losses to the new Cleveland Browns. Double Zero: The 49ers have been shut out in the second half of each of the past two games. Triple Zero: The number of offensive touchdowns scored by San Francisco in the last three games. Never: The last time that happened. 1: Wins since Steve Young went down Sept. 27 with his fourth concussion in three years. 2: Touchdowns scored by Lawrence Phillips before being suspended by the 49ers for conduct detrimental to the team. 3: Touchdowns produced by journeyman Saints quarterback Billy Joe Tolliver against the 49ers -- two on runs and the third on a pass. 3-6: San Francisco's record. 5: Losses in a row for San Francisco. 6: San Francisco's scoring total in each of the last two games. 7: Consecutive losses by the Saints to the 49ers before Sunday's 24-6 victory. 7: The number of potential losses, uh, games remaining in the season for the 49ers. 8: Interceptions thrown by Steve Stenstrom and Jeff Garcia in the last six games. 16: Consecutive 10-win seasons by San Francisco, a streak now in serious jeopardy. 18: The yardage of Stenstrom's longest completion Sunday against the Saints. 18-0: The Niners' regular-season home record under coach Steve Mariucci before his first loss, 31-29 to Carolina on Oct. 17. 19: The yardage of Jerry Rice's longest catch of the season. 23: San Francisco's league ranking in total offense. 31: San Francisco's league ranking in pass defense. 60.9: Young's passer rating at the time of his injury. 96.8: Young's career passer rating. 230: Yards passing in the last two games for the 49ers. 258: Points given up by San Francisco's defense, second-worst in the league. Y2K: When or if 49ers will get better.

For the first time since 1980, the 49ers have lost five in a row, and they're staggering toward just their second losing season since then, excluding strike-shortened 1982.

"We're a team in transition," general manager Bill Walsh said. "We've lost a number of outstanding players over the years and in a sense failed to replace them. Then it just boils down to this kind of thing."

Walsh suggested more difficult times are ahead before things get better.

"I've signed a three-year contract, and I'd like to see it turned around in three years," said the Hall of Fame coach who rejoined the 49ers' front office in January. "That's what I'm anticipating. You can't turn around a team in a year."

Even the club's shrinking corps of elite players recognize the severity of the decline.

"We're just not very good," safety Tim McDonald said after San Francisco's latest loss, a 24-6 setback to New Orleans on Sunday.

The Saints became the latest team to end a streak against the 49ers (3-6), stopping a seven-game slide. Carolina stopped the 49ers' 19-game home winning streak with a 31-29 victory Oct. 17, and St. Louis snapped a 17-game losing streak by beating the 49ers 42-20. On Sunday, the Rams (7-2) will try to beat the 49ers in San Francisco for the first time since 1990.

"Nobody said it was going to be easy," coach Steve Mariucci said. "And it is not going to be easy. It is going to be difficult, in fact."

The 49ers, who with one more loss in the next seven games would see their streak of 10-victory seasons end at 16, have a lot of problems but the one that stands out is the loss of Steve Young to a concussion Sept. 27.

The two-time league MVP, who continued an unbroken line of exceptional quarterbacks when he succeeded Joe Montana in 1991, hasn't played since and might not ever play again.

"Steve Young has been carrying this franchise on his shoulders for the last eight, nine years," Walsh said. "Without Steve, then everything begins to break down."

Steve Stenstrom and Jeff Garcia have gone 1-5 starting in Young's place. The offense has failed to score a touchdown in three consecutive games, and the replacement quarterbacks have been unable to get the ball with any consistency to Jerry Rice, Terrell Owens and J.J. Stokes.

The 49ers are so desperate for solid quarterbacking that they plan to work out retired Jeff Hostetler on Tuesday to see if he can help salvage the season.

"We've talked about it and said, 'Why not?' Let's give him a call and see if he's interested,"' Mariucci said.

But San Francisco's problems go well beyond quarterback. The 49ers were left without running back Garrison Hearst this season because of a serious ankle injury and opted to sign Lawrence Phillips as a replacement despite his troubled past.

When Phillips lost the starting job to fellow free agent Charlie Garner, he became disgruntled, refusing at times to practice and defying his coaches. Last Friday, Phillips was suspended for conduct detrimental to the team, and Mariucci said the 49ers don't want him back. He'll be terminated by the team as soon as the NFL management council spells out the salary-cap ramifications so the 49ers can determine "a parting of the ways" as Mariucci put it.

San Francisco, a five-time Super Bowl winner that last won an NFL championship in 1994, also is paying the price from years of bad drafts, salary-cap problems, management turnover, free-agency flops, and an aging roster.

Walsh, a three-time Super Bowl winner as 49ers coach, has restored front-office stability after two years of disarray. During that span, Carmen Policy and Dwight Clark headed to Cleveland after a falling out with co-owner Eddie DeBartolo, who himself was banished by the league for his role in a gambling fraud case.

DeBartolo has since turned control of the team over to his sister, Denise DeBartolo York, as part of a tentative settlement between the siblings who are squabbling over control of the family's financial empire.

Running the football operation, Walsh had to lop off $28 million from this year's player payroll to get the team in compliance with the salary cap and that meant letting go or trading such players as Merton Hanks and Kevin Gogan, both former Pro Bowl selections.

"We had to reconstruct our team in a sense following our purge," Walsh said. "And we've had to sign people to replace them while staying under the cap. It hasn't always worked out."

There also has been little impact from Walsh's first draft class, with four of the eight on reserve lists, continuing a dismal pattern in the 1990s.

And with little help from younger players, and age and injuries taking a toll on their stars, the 49ers have fallen in a downward spiral.

"It's just not happening," Rice said.