I agree with the latter. If you mean compete within games, I agree. If you mean compete for the playoffs, then no. I can't go there with this roster.
Edit: But also, if we had a healthy Kyler in the offseason, maybe Monti approaches the roster building differently. That would have been the only way to compete for the playoffs.
I think there's other things in play when talking about the playoffs. A lot of mediocre teams scrape in depending on their division.
I agree this isn't any kind of contender but with a healthy Kyler they have an outside shot at scraping in.
So much comes down to QB play, they are force multipliers, or force decimators. Look at Stafford on Sunday. That Rams roster sucks, Seahawks roster is far better. But Geno was poor and Stafford was awesome. The Cards 2021 team wasn't great, I'm not even convinced it's better than this team. Yeah it had some names like Chandler but he sucked that year.
Put 2021 early form Kyler on this current team I wouldn't be surprised if we won a bunch of games.