49ers vs. New Orleans Saints

49ers 38, Saints 35 (OT). Candlestick comeback on Sun December 7 improves the home side to 6-8. Walsh's club rallied from a 35-7 halftime deficit to force overtime and won on a Ray Wersching field goal. Largest comeback victory in regular-season NFL history. Third consecutive win and first overtime game of the season.[1][2][3]

Thirty-five to seven at halftime. Thirty-eight to thirty-five at the finish. A 28-point halftime hole at Candlestick Park on Sunday and a Saints opponent that had to be beaten in overtime to put the largest second-half comeback in regular-season history on the record book. There is no measured way to write this game. The home offense, which spent seven weeks unable to produce a closing drive, produced four of them in a row in the second half. DeBerg threw when the team had no choice but to throw and protected it well enough to walk into overtime tied. Earl Cooper's workload from week one returned in December. The defense, which gave up 35 in two quarters, did not give up another point. Wersching closed the game with the leg that has now been the closing instrument in three different wins this year. Walsh's project has a defining afternoon on file. Three games remain. The result does not change the season's final math. It changes the year's defining document.

Fourteen-game profile. Three-game winning streak. Differential minus-65. 28-point halftime deficit overcome, the largest second-half comeback in regular-season history. First overtime game of the season for either club. Next: at Atlanta.

The first half of this game was the season's familiar story compressed into thirty minutes. The Saints scored on five drives. The home side scored on one. The score at the half was 35-7. The second half was a different game. The home offense produced three touchdown drives. The defense produced three stops. Overtime arrived tied. Wersching's field goal closed the most consequential win Walsh's second year has on tape. The schematic read on the second half is that the offense, when forced into pure throwing mode by the score, produced sustainable drives at a rate the year had not previously suggested it could. DeBerg's late protection of the football was the season's clearest evidence that the system Walsh is building is capable of closing a game it has no business closing. The defense's second-half shutout is the harder thing to study in a box-score-only environment, because the Saints did not turn the ball over their way out of the game. The home defense made stops. Three of them, in a row, in the second half of a game it had been losing 35-7. The losing streak ended last month. Today the comeback win that will be this season's defining clip went into the book. Three games remain.