Chargers Can’t Stop 49ers or Young, 24-13 : Football: Joe Montana watches from sidelines as San Francisco breezes past the Chargers, who slip to 1-2.

Chargers lose, 24-13, and now the bad news.

The next time they play the 49ers, they will face Joe Montana at quarterback.

“It scares you,” Charger cornerback Gill Byrd said. “I don’t know who said the 49ers are going down, because they’re a good football team and they’re going to be right there at the top.”

As for rock bottom, the Chargers have been there. They were thrashed by the Rams, 24-3, a week ago and, with 2:23 remaining in the third quarter Monday night in Candlestick Park, de ja yuck , it was 49ers 24, Chargers 3.

It has to get better, right?

The Chargers, 1-2 in exhibition play, will wrap up preseason preparations in San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium Friday at 7 against the Los Angeles Raiders. Last year, the Chargers finished exhibition play against the Raiders and lost 34-7.

The 49ers played Monday night’s game without their offensive commander. Montana, who has been bothered by elbow tendinitis, came out for warmups, tossed the ball around and then left. He returned at game time minus his shoulder pads and helmet.

The 49ers went to the bullpen and called on left-handed Steve Young. Shouldn’t there be some rule barring NFL teams from having two quarterbacks better than any of the quarterbacks on the opposition’s roster?

Young ran for a 47-yard touchdown, set up a four-yard Keith Henderson touchdown run and then hit John Taylor with a 21-yard touchdown pass to close the first half.

“They came out and played a pretty good football game,” said Charger quarterback Billy Joe Tolliver, who completed 6 of 11 passes for 74 yards. “I think all we can do is keep pressing forward as a team. We got to keep it in perspective and remember that it still doesn’t count yet. We can’t have everybody hanging their heads just because we’ve gotten beat the last two games in a row.

“It’s like Dan (Henning) said, they are arguably the best team in the NFL over the last 10 years. And you don’t get that way by having a bunch of scrubs on your team. They got good players in every position and they got them deep.”

After the 49ers established that they were going to be 4-0 in exhibition play, they tried to run out the second-half clock. They ran 12:37 off the clock against the Chargers’ No. 1 defensive unit with an 18-play drive that covered 84 yards to open the third quarter.

“The coach loves to see that kind of thing,” Young said, after completing 18 of 25 passes for 227 yards. “I knew I was going to start after Joe warmed up and he couldn’t go. I just hope in a good way both Joe and I can help the team win the Super Bowl. I know what my role is.”

Young opened the scoring for the 49ers in the first quarter with an improvised quarterback draw on third and 13 from the Chargers’ 47-yard line. After just beating the 40-second clock in accepting the ball from center, he backpedaled a step or two and looked up to find no one in front of him.

He took off running, slipped through a Donald Frank tackle at the Chargers’ eight-yard line and carried Sam Seale into the end zone.

The Chargers’ offense, meanwhile, had floundered on its first two possessions. But the running of Rod Bernstine and Ronnie Harmon kept them from striking out on their third effort.

Harmon gained 31 yards on a dash around right end and Bernstine carried the ball five times for 25 yards to set up John Carney’s 23-yard field goal with 2:08 remaining in the opening quarter.

The Chargers went to their backup quarterback in the second quarter, but John Friesz failed to keep the pressure on starter Billy Joe Tolliver. Friesz completed 6 of 11 passes for 41 yards. His longest completion, for 12 yards, came on the final play of the first half against the 49ers’ prevent defense.

While Friesz struggled, Young was marching the 49ers through the Charger defense. On third and three from the Chargers’ 19, Young put a bootleg fake on linebacker Junior Seau and went left for 13 yards and a first down. Two plays later, Henderson charged up the middle for a 14-3 lead.

“We couldn’t knock them out of the box on third down,” Coach Dan Henning said. “The 49ers controlled the game, ran it fairly well and passed it extremely well.”

Young completed passes of 22, 5, 15 and 14 yards in the final two minutes of the first half to set up his 21-yard touchdown completion to Taylor, who beat the coverage of cornerback Sam Seale and a late-arriving Stanley Richard.

“Young threw a perfect pass,” Seale said, “and that was that.”

The 49ers, however, added an exclamation point to the scoring with Mike Cofer’s 19-yard field goal to cap their ball-hogging third-quarter drive.

The Chargers came back with Tom Whelihan’s 41-yard field goal in the fourth quarter and pounced on a Spencer Tillman fumble at the 49ers’ 15 to set up their only touchdown. Running back Eric Bieniemy, who has been missing in action the first two weeks, ran up the middle for seven yards and a touchdown with 10:01 remaining. It ended an eight-quarter touchdown scoring drought.

“It was pretty exciting playing against the team of the ‘80s,” Bieniemy said after rushing for 52 yards on nine carries. “It was just about the most amazing experience in my football career.”