And every week, the answer is yes. A resounding yes.

We've seen plenty of bad out of the 49ers in recent years. But I nominate yesterday's 20-16 loss to Atlanta as the worst of the 27 losses we've witnessed in the 2 › years of Mike Nolan's head-coaching career. The worst of Alex Smith's career as a starting quarterback.

The 49ers played one in the small (and rapidly shrinking) pool of teams they could hope to beat. A wounded, whimpering, demoralized Falcons team. A team that has resorted to Joey Harrington as its starting quarterback. A team whose own city found it too vile to watch Sunday. A team that appears to hate its coach. A coach who hates his team so much he cuts veterans he could use in midseason.

Yet the 49ers lost. Again. For the sixth consecutive time. Despite linebacker Tully Banta-Cain's guarantees of a victory.

"They're all frustrating," said Smith, the third-year quarterback. "This one hurts more than last week. They all hurt a little bit more."

The 49ers are a swell group of guys, who are sticking together through bad and worse and aren't selling one another out. Their sartorial coach tells us so at every opportunity. They just happen to be a really lousy football team. Particularly on offense, where they have been lousy in every game. But now the defense is matching the offensive effort.

Yesterday, the 49ers were beaten by the Harrington-led Falcons. Smith was outplayed by Harrington, which is about the most damning thing you can say about an NFL quarterback.

The 49ers are now at the halfway point of a season that was supposed to end in the playoffs. Instead they are halfway toward qualifying for a top-five draft pick in April. The only problem is that pick will be going to the New England Patriots — as part of a 2007 draft-day trade for tackle Joe Staley.

The 49ers assumed they were going to be good enough this year that their pick would fall later in the first round. It's one thing for fans and media to wildly overshoot the target on expectations for a team — kind of like Smith trying to find his receivers Sunday. But it's a much bigger problem if a team has so little grasp of its own reality.

So instead of a mid-first-round pick, the 49ers might just be handing the Patriots the top overall pick. Because the 49ers definitely have the stench of the worst team in the league.

But perhaps they wouldn't even want the top pick. Because their last one isn't turning out too well.

To be fair, Smith is only five weeks removed from tearing his right shoulder, and only one week removed from writhing in pain every time he threw the ball while playing the part of the sacrificial lamb against the New Orleans Saints.

Sunday he appeared to have his pain under control. But he didn't have his game under control. He overthrew wide-open receivers again and again. He threw three interceptions. He came away with a passer rating of 22.8. And he assured Harrington of not being the worst quarterback in the game.

Whatever potential glimmered from Smith late last season seems to have been snuffed out by bad coaching, injury and mismanagement.

Smith was without his best weapon, the 49ers' best player, Frank Gore. But it might not have made any difference, because the 49ers haven't utilized Gore well all season, even when the running back was healthy. The 49ers also lost starting right guard Justin Smiley early in the game to a dislocated shoulder. But Smith got decent protection most of the game. More than most of the other bad performances, this loss has to rest on his shoulders — if the wounded wing can handle the weight.

Smith's performance was the most glaring, but — again — this was a team-wide collapse. The defense was playing without cornerback Walt Harris, but that's not enough of an excuse for allowing the Falcons to move the ball so well. Ancient Warrick Dunn rushed for 100 yards for the first time in more than a year.

The coach once again exhibited odd game-management techniques. The 49ers were down to just one timeout with almost seven minutes to play, because Nolan had already used two. He took one timeout when the 49ers were at the Falcons' goal line. Nolan said he was debating going for it on fourth down if the third-down play wasn't successful, so he wanted to make sure he had two plays called. Instead the timeout seemed to get the Falcons' defense refocused. The 49ers lost 3 yards on third down and Nolan opted for a field goal. Smith said he didn't know what the fourth-down play would have been anyway. So, all in all, not a great use of a timeout.

On the Falcons' ensuing series, Nolan used another timeout, his second defensive timeout of the game. He said it was a personnel issue.

So the 49ers headed into the waning minutes, down by just a point, with only one timeout to stop the clock. It ended up not hurting them because they were too inept to get into position to win the game. But Nolan isn't doing much to inspire the skeptical masses.

In fact the 49ers aren't doing much to inspire anything, from confidence to plans for a new stadium to hope for the future. Even Nolan seemed more downtrodden and less willing to bend reality to his desires after the game.