MIAMI _ Confetti still fluttered in the air as San Francisco players and coaches confronted the obligatory question.
Is this group confident that it will be able to return next year to take care of unfinished business?
"I think every team that loses the Super Bowl says they are going to be back," tight end George Kittle said.
He's not wrong. The Los Angeles Rams made similar proclamations in the wake of their loss to New England in last year's Super Bowl. The Rams, like the 49ers, were regarded as a good, young team on the rise, a team that should be in the championship mix for years to come.
That could still be true. But there has been this one, little bump in the road.
The Rams followed up their Super Bowl loss by failing to make the playoffs.
Will the Niners follow in the Rams' disappointing footsteps? A pattern has emerged.
The NFC has sent six different champions to the Super Bowl in the last six seasons. The conference hasn't had a team repeat since Seattle did in 2013 and '14.
Where does this leave the Cowboys heading into next season?
In the thick of it.
If you are a Cowboys fan, you are painfully aware that the team hasn't advanced to the NFC Championship Game in the previous six years. You can multiply that number by four and reach the same result.
But keep this in mind. Only one of those six NFC teams has a better, regular season record than the Cowboys in this six-year span.
Dallas hasn't gotten it done. But the regular season record shows it belongs in the conversation. A new coach in Mike McCarthy with a new approach could provide the spark this group has lacked to get over the playoff hump.
That's why Jerry Jones reluctantly moved on from Jason Garrett. Some good things happened under Garrett's watch, a fact many fans loathe to acknowledge. But Dallas never advanced past the divisional round and never made the playoffs in back-to-back seasons.
No team has established supremacy in the NFC. That works to the Cowboys' advantage. But Dallas must walk through that revolving door before it shuts.
San Francisco? Expand that sample size to eight seasons and the 49ers have been to the Super Bowl twice.
The Niners have a regular season winning percentage of .476 in this period.
The Cowboys have won 11 more regular season games and own a .562 winning percentage.
And that's the point. After losing to Baltimore by three points in Super Bowl XLVII, the San Francisco players and coaches talked about coming back.
How many of those players and coaches took part in Sunday's game?
"We're built tough," linebacker Kwon Alexander said. "We're built tough. ... We're staying together, keep grinding, keep doing the thing that we've been doing. Stay as a family.
"We're going to be back."
That's reminiscent of the comments coming out of the Rams locker room at this time last year. And Philadelphia the year before. And Atlanta the year before that.
You get the idea.
"We're a young team and we've got a very bright future," San Francisco quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo said after letting a 10-point fourth quarter lead slip away in the loss to Kansas City. "We've got to take this in stride and remember this feeling and let it fuel us in the offseason."
The Cowboys have 24 years of fuel stored up.
It's time they put it to use.
