49ers vs. Buffalo Bills

Bills 18, 49ers 13. Candlestick finale on Sun December 21 closes the regular season at 6-10. Five-point margin and the fifth one-score loss of the year. Walsh's second-year record ends one game above his first-year mark, a four-win improvement over 1979 against a tougher schedule. Season-ending defeat to a playoff-bound visitor.[1][2][3]

Six and ten. The season finale ended 18-13 to Buffalo at Candlestick on Sunday and Walsh's second year closes one game above the first-year floor. A loss in the finale is the third one-score defeat in five weeks and the fifth one-score loss of the season. The arithmetic of the year reads in chapters: three-and-oh to start, three-and-eight through the middle, three straight including the regular season's largest comeback, then a divisional road blowout and a home finale loss. There are several ways to file this season. The standings file it as 6-10 and out. Internal accounting files it as a year that produced four more wins than 1979 against a tougher schedule and the largest second-half comeback the record book contains. The honest read is somewhere between. This second year did not finish the year-two job. It produced the evidence the job is finishable. The next year of this project gets the next chapter.

Sixteen-game profile. Points differential minus-95. Season totals scored 320, allowed 415. Eight one-score games in 1980, a 4-4 split. Final record a four-win improvement over 1979.

A five-point home loss to a playoff-bound visitor closes a year that has produced two coherent halves and a single defining clip. The defense allowed 18 in the finale, a number this offense should be able to win games against and a number it did not produce enough to win this one against. DeBerg's protection of the ball remained the year's clearest piece of evidence that the Walsh-style offense is taking hold; the closing-drive arithmetic that this team had problems with through the seven-game losing streak returned in the final game. Eight one-score games in sixteen weeks, a 4-4 split in them. The 49ers were a competitive team in a majority of their Sundays this year and a winning team in too few of them. The next assignment is the offseason and the year-three start. The closing piece of evidence the staff files today: 6-10 in 1980 after 2-14 in 1979, the largest comeback in regular-season history on tape, and a season ledger of one-score games that says this team is closer to the finished article than the standings page suggests.