Giants vs. 49ers: You Have Not Seen the Last of This San Francisco 49ers Team

As devastating as yesterday's NFC Championship Game loss against the New York Giants was for the San Francisco 49ers, it isn't the end of the world for this franchise. 

How many of us would have expected the 49ers to be an overtime field goal away from a trip to the Super Bowl when this season began? Seriously, I will take a roll call here.

They were one play, one mistake and one bad call away from going to the sixth Super Bowl in franchise history. 

This is a team that won six games in 2010, fired their head coach and had to endure a lockout with a new staff and personnel coming in. Most media outlets had them winning five or six games. Even an optimist like myself had the 49ers maxing out at nine wins this season. 

In the end they came up with 14 victories, including one heart-stopping victory against the New Orleans Saints in the divisional playoffs and an equally gut-wrenching loss to the New York Giants last night. 

Still, this is a team that should be proud of itself. They fought through controversy, got off to a slow start in the preseason because of the lockout, had a ton of new faces, an almost entirely new coaching staff and a much-maligned quarterback. 

The fairy tale came to an end last night, but the ride is far from over. 

You have to look at the logistics of the situation for a second in order to understand that the San Francisco 49ers are now "elite" and will be that way for the foreseeable future. Alex Smith is still only 27, and they have young receivers, a promising young tailback, a solid offensive line and a defensive core that is going to be playing together for a long time. 

This is a franchise and an organization that has done it the right way, building through the draft and supplementing in free agency. They have also been extremely smart when it comes to spending money against the cap. This means that San Francisco is going to have a lot of money to throw around at eventual upgrades in free agency if they are unable to find everything they need in the draft. 

They have what should be the Coach of the Year in Jim Harbaugh, Executive of the Year in Trent Baalke and Defensive Rookie of the Year in Aldon Smith. 

They have a core that would go to the ends of the earth for one another. A tight-knit group of football players like no other in the NFL today. This is a team that has had the talent for the last couple of seasons, but finally put it together in an amazing run in 2011. 

By all accounts this is the worst San Francisco 49ers team that we are going to see for the next five-plus seasons. This spells doom for the rest of the NFL because of how close they came to stunning the world and getting to the Super Bowl. 

Watch out NFL, the San Francisco 49ers are back!