A winning culture will be established with the right HC and with the talent at the key positions. It's not going to be established with a bunch of players who are borderline NFLers and a mediocre coach who is stubborn and inflexible. Hoping for the playoffs is fools gold and laughable. This team is not going to make the playoffs, nor should they. Even if they should happen to luck in, they'd just get blown out in round 1. All it would serve to accomplish is preventing our getting our OL fixed and adding the talent we need to add in the draft. I hope we lose out. The attitude that it doesn't matter where one is slotted in the draft is ridiculous imo. It totally matters when you need players at the prime positions (QB, LT, Edge, C, #1 CB and #1 WR) as they always go early unless they have character or injury concerns. Thankfully, I believe we have the QB, but if we have any realistic hope of adding elite players at LT and Edge we better be picking as early as possible. #1 WRs and CBs can be found lower in the 1st & 2nd rounds, but it is rare that elite LTs and elite Edge rushers can be. Yes, talent can be found throughout the draft, but usually at other, less important positions. That's what Mac did, in spite of having high/early draft position. He wasted it taking players at relatively non important positions like DT, 3-4 DE and S, and he wasted a slew of high picks to get our QB, when he could have simply drafted one that fell into his lap.
SanFran just played the type of game I was talking about. Stout run D that held Ravens to season low 20 points. But SanFran only put up 17. Not enough!