Bad as these 49ers are, the 1978 team was even worse

Before the 49ers were the team of the 1980s, they were the worst team of 1978.

They went 2-14, set a never-threatened NFL record with 63 turnovers, and their 33.0 passer rating remains the league’s worst in the past 38 years.

But those are just the stats. The stories paint a bleaker picture.

Defensive coordinator Dan Radakovich quit before a preseason game. Interim head coach Fred O’Connor asked for volunteers to play quarterback in Detroit. Linebacker Dan Bunz fought fans outside Candlestick Park. General manager Joe Thomas cursed the team after losses. And past-his-prime running back O.J. Simpson, whom Thomas had mortgaged the future to acquire, had a loose grasp of the playbook.

There’s more. In fact, there’s so much more that right tackle Keith Fahnhorst was told a book could be written about the 1978 team. Fahnhorst sounded genuinely confused.

“I don’t know who would want to read that,” he said.

The book is on hold, but this story is being written because that team now has some bad company. Its franchise-record nine-game losing streak was matched last week by the 2016 edition of the 49ers, who could break the tie with a loss to the Dolphins on Sunday.

But even if the 49ers (1-9) set the record for the longest losing streak, or become the only one-win team in franchise history, they can take comfort in this: They aren’t as awful and dysfunctional as their predecessors.

The 1978 team was so awful that even their losing-streak-breaking victory, a 6-3 stinker over Tampa Bay, didn’t change perceptions. The Chronicle headline after the victors committed six turnovers: “It Was Awful, But It Was A 49er Win.”

“I’d come from Don Shula’s team, which was winning Super Bowls,” said wide receiver Mike Shumann, then a rookie who had spent training camp with the Dolphins. “It was almost a joke. There was really no direction. There was no structure. It was like, ‘This is the NFL?’”

The 49ers did some decidedly non-NFL things. Their 63 turnovers, for example, are five more than any other team has had in league history. Bunz, then an exhausted rookie, stopped going to the bench when the offense was on the field to save some walking.

“I would stand as close as I could get to whatever end of the field they were at,” Bunz said. “And I’d say, ‘I’m waiting. They’re either going to fumble, throw an interception or punt.’ Sometimes they got the punt blocked. It was like, ‘Really? Are you kidding me?’”

It was no joke. But Fahnhorst’s memory of the 63 turnovers is funny: “I don’t recall that being the biggest problem,” he said.

The other issues? Let’s start with head coach Pete McCulley.

The 49ers also went 2-14 in 1979, but players knew they weren’t rudderless under rookie coach Bill Walsh. In 1978, they had McCulley, who was fired after nine games, and his replacement, offensive coordinator O’Connor, the overseer of an attack that scored a league-low 219 points.

McCulley and O’Connor had never been head coaches before 1978. And they were never head coaches after 1978. There was a reason for that.

“I had better coaching on other levels,” said Bunz, a first-round pick from Long Beach State, which hasn’t played football since 1991.

Bunz did respect Radakovich, but his defensive coordinator left the team just before the third preseason game against the Raiders. Radakovich had spent the previous five seasons winning two Super Bowls and working for future Hall of Fame coach Chuck Noll with the Steelers.

In other words, he also might have wondered: This is the NFL?

Radakovich bolted the 49ers because secondary coach Jimmy Carr kept ignoring his defensive calls from the press box and McCulley refused to intercede.

“He left 15 minutes before kickoff,” Bunz said. “I was shocked.”

Radakovich returned to the staff when McCulley was fired after a 1-8 start. And McCulley’s swan song was also center Randy Cross’ final game of the season.

Cross missed out on seven games with O’Connor, who began his interim tenure by threatening two-a-day, full-contact practices in midseason to whip the team into shape. He didn’t follow through, but the tone had been set for a farcical finish.

Looking back, Cross, who suffered a grisly injury when his own running back slammed into him, considers his broken bone a blessing.

“I was only part of that team for nine games in ’78,” Cross said, “because I was lucky enough to have Bobby Ferrell run up my back and break my ankle.”

The offense was also broken.

With Steve DeBerg and Scott Bull making the starts, the 49ers threw the 10th-most interceptions in NFL history (36) and had the third-lowest completion percentage (43.7) in the past 38 years.

After a 24-13 loss in New Orleans (said O’Connor: “It was another learning experience; I guess I’ll be educator of the year”), Bull summed up his 9-of-27 performance thusly: “Some were bad passes, some were throwaways and some were dropped.”

DeBerg and Bull made all the starts because Thomas had released Jim Plunkett, a future two-time Super Bowl winner, before the season. Their lack of quarterback options became clear when DeBerg and Bull suffered knee injuries in a season-ending 33-14 loss in Detroit. Their exits prompted O’Connor to seek volunteers, as if the 49ers were playing at a schoolyard instead of the Silverdome.

“He comes over to the offensive side of the sideline and says, ‘Who wants to play quarterback?’” Shumann said. “We were all looking at each other like, ‘What the hell?’”

Wide receiver Freddie Solomon, who last played quarterback at the University of Tampa in 1973, took over, but he returned to his typical position after injuries to other wideouts. That left rookie safety Bruce Threadgill, a southpaw quarterback at Mississippi State, who had a broken right thumb. A trainer cut the cast off Threadgill’s arm, and he threw two passes that were intercepted to help cap a seven-turnover performance.

It was the type of comical loss that led Bunz to fight insult-spewing fans after home games and, as he recalls, at Bay Area restaurants. He even decked a teammate, linebacker Joe Harris, in the locker room.

Now a mellowed-out middle-school teacher and lavender farmer in Placer County, Bunz says he probably would have been kicked out of the modern-day NFL. In 1978, his frustration kept boiling over, although he eventually shielded himself from abuse from the local media.

“Halfway through the season, the newspaper boy came to the door and I said, ‘Here, here’s $20,’” Bunz said. “He’s like, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘OK, $40. Do not ever bring a paper to my house again.’”

But the majority of the bile was directed at Thomas, whom 31-year-old owner Eddie DeBartolo hired when he took over in 1977. Thomas began by firing coach Monte Clark, who led the 49ers to an 8-6 record in 1976, and he fired his first head-coaching hire, Ken Meyer, after one season.

By 1978, Thomas had purged the roster of 14 of the 22 starters from the 1976 team. And he’d also surrendered five high-end draft picks, including a 1979 first-rounder, to acquire the broken-down Simpson, 31, who was coming off knee surgery and lasted only 10 games in 1978 before retiring the next season.

Fahnhorst recalls Simpson was late to his first training camp with the 49ers because he was filming a movie.

“O.J. was great because he really didn’t care any more,” Shumann said. “He knew he couldn’t play at the level he wanted to; he was just getting paid for what he’d done previously. It was so bad that he didn’t know the playbook. So Steve DeBerg would call a play in the huddle and then tell O.J. what he was supposed to do: ‘Red Right 18 Bob. That’s a sweep left to you, O.J.’”

Near the end of the season, during a 24-7 prime-time home loss to the Steelers, fans unfurled a massive banner that read, “Blame Joe Thomas.” The 49ers had it confiscated — a spokesman later called it “tasteless” — but the fans responded with the best end around of the season.

Two weeks later, at the next home game, T-shirts were sold for $5.50 outside Candlestick Park. The message: “Blame Joe Thomas.”

Thomas “would come down after each game just cursing us all out,” Shumann said. “He’d be saying things like, ‘If I’m going down, you’re going down with me.’”

Fahnhorst recalls a similarly ominous message from O’Connor in Detroit after the regular-season finale. The interim guy was already looking forward to some punishing practices.

“Fred O’Connor got up and was saying how we were going to turn things around the next year. We were going to have the toughest training camp that there was,” Fahnhorst said. “And I’m thinking, ‘Oh, God, here we go again.’”

Instead, the 49ers began going in another direction. They hired Walsh in 1979, drafted Joe Montana months later and returned to the Silverdome in January 1982 to win their first Super Bowl.

That Super Bowl team included Bunz, Fahnhorst, Cross and Shumann, survivors who have some hard-earned advice for this year’s team: If you’re going through hell, keep going.

“When I look at the 49ers this year, I don’t see them being as bad as we were and I don’t see them going through as much hell as we did,” Fahnhorst said. “But I imagine if you’re in there in the middle of it, it feels just as bad. Man, it was miserable.”

Eric Branch is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ebranch@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Eric_Branch

A season of despair

The 1978 49ers had the worst scoring offense in the NFL (13.7 points per game) and had the 23rd-ranked scoring defense (21.9 ppg). They stayed close in many of their losses — six of which were by a combined 23 points — but the result was a 2-14 season:

Date Opponent Score W/L Sept. 3 at Cleveland 24-7 L Sept. 10 Chicago 16-13 L Sept. 17 at Houston 20-19 L Sept. 24 at N.Y. Giants 27-10 L Oct. 1 Cincinnati 28-12 W Oct. 8 at Los Angeles 27-10 L Oct. 15 New Orleans 14-7 L Oct. 22 Atlanta 20-17 L Oct. 29 at Washington 38-20 L Nov. 5 at Atlanta 21-10 L Nov. 12 St. Louis 16-10 L Nov. 19 Los Angeles 31-28 L Nov. 27 Pittsburgh 24-7 L Dec. 3 at New Orleans 24-13 L Dec. 10 Tampa Bay 6-3 W Dec. 17 at Detroit 33-14 L

Team leaders

How do you lose 14 of 16 games? This might explain it: The 1978 49ers had an NFL-record 63 turnovers, threw the 10th most interceptions (36) in league history and posted the worst passer rating (33.0) in the past 38 years. A look at their statistical leaders:

Passing

Player Att. Comp. Pct. Yards TD INT Steve DeBerg 137 302 45.4 1,570 8 22 Scott Bull 48 121 39.7 651 1 11 Freddie Solomon 5 10 50.0 85 0 1 Bruce Threadgill 0 2 0.0 0 0 2

Rushing

Player Car Yards Avg. TD O.J. Simpson 161 593 3.7 1 Bob Ferrell 125 471 3.8 1 Paul Hofer 121 465 3.8 7 Greg Boykin 102 361 3.5 2

Receiving

Player Rec. Yards Avg. TD Freddie Solomon 31 458 14.8 2 Ken McAfee 22 205 9.3 1 Paul Seal 21 370 17.6 2 O.J. Simpson 21 172 8.2 2

2-14

49ers’ final record in 1978, tied for worst in franchise history

9

Consecutive losses, the franchise record that the current team has tied

219

NFL-low point total, which is just 15 more than they’ve scored through 10 games this season

-131

Season point differential, which is actually better than the 137 points by which they’ve been outscored in their current nine-game losing streak

36

Interceptions thrown by four 49ers quarterbacks, compared with nine touchdown passes, as part of an NFL-record 63 turnovers, which is nearly four per game