The 49ers will not attract the national-television audience that tuned in to watch them play the NFC West-leading Arizona Cardinals.

Instead, it will be a game featuring two 2-7 teams.

The St. Louis Rams will come to Candlestick Park in a game matching clubs in similar situations. Both the 49ers and Rams have made in-season coaching changes. Jim Haslett now coaches the Rams, taking over for fired Scott Linehan.

And the 49ers are now led by fiery Mike Singletary, who assumed the coaching role when Mike Nolan was fired on Oct. 20.

Singletary has a particularly daunting task this week, as he tries to make sure there is no letdown - lasting effect - from the 49ers' agonizing 29-24 loss to the Cardinals.

"There will be no carryover," Singletary said. "Carryover to what? We'll be fine. We got a great group of guys in there who want to win. But we just got to learn how to win. That's it."

The 49ers suffered a heart-breaking loss. The coaching staff mismanaged the final minute of the game. On the final play from outside the 2-yard line, fullback Michael Robinson was stuffed at the 1-yard line to thwart the 49ers' final hope of a victory.

"I think we have some good character guys on this team," Robinson said. "We just have to get back to work. We need to have some pride about ourselves, take this loss and learn from it and get ready to play (the Rams)."

The 49ers are still smarting from their meltdown against the Cardinals. Offensive coordinator Mike Martz and Singletary shared the blame for the chaotic nature of the final minute of the game.

Martz said he was responsible for the 49ers losing approximately 25 crucial seconds after Jason Hill caught a pass and was stopped at the 1-yard line with 45 seconds remaining.

Martz admitted to getting overly excited. He ordered quarterback Shaun Hill to spike the ball to stop the clock. But he also got ahead of himself and called for the 49ers' short-yardage personnel.

The 49ers had as many as 13 players on the field at the same time, so Hill was unable to spike the ball because it would have resulted in a penalty. He had to wait until there were only 11 players on the field and in a proper offensive formation to kill the clock.

"There was some chaos that I created on the sideline," Martz said. "I did a bad job there. We were trying to spike it and I called for a personnel change. I just went too fast with everything and it created too much confusion."

Things got further confused in the final seconds when a replay review was called after Frank Gore was stopped short of the goal line.

The ball was originally spotted at the 1-yard line. The 49ers were told that the play would start when the ball was ready for play. But the sideline could not hear referee Tony Corrente's announcement that the ball was moved back to the 2 1/2-yard line.

Martz had already called for Michael Robinson to get the ball on a fullback dive. But from the 2 1/2-yard line that is not the call Martz wanted to make.

"It's just frustrating as you look back on it because Mike Martz made the call," Singletary said. "He would have changed that call had he known that the ball was going to be moved."

Hill handed off to Robinson, who was stopped for a 1-yard gain. The 49ers suffered an excruciating defeat on the home field of the NFC West-leading Cardinals.

SERIES HISTORY: 117th regular-season meeting. The Rams lead the series 60-54-2. The team met in one playoff game, in which the 49ers defeated the Rams 30-3 in 1989.