Yes Jesus was referring to the “tribulation” of that generation. He was looking at the second temple and foretold it’s destruction. He was not looking at the second temple and pretending it was a third temple that would be destroyed.
Preterism and cessationism both provides a lot of good biblical arguments for why it already happened. Even in one of the recent podcasts, the genealogies podcast they mention have 666/616 is a reference to Nero.