Their is and always has been a talent gap between us and the bigs. The gap isn't as big as many in our fanbase feel at the moment. We typically feel this way after every "down" year and especially when the mutts are up.
Small improvements on a team can lead to huge differences in W/L. The mutts played with the same players this year except for Fromm.
We do have talent. Some excellent talent in some spots, especially OL. We don't have the wealth of it across the board and thus lack depth. We always do. We get our OL healthy, improve the kicking game, we will have a good year next year imo. If we can manage a competent QB rush from our DEs also and we could have an excellent year.
Those are "ifs" though. Teams with greater depth overcome more of these types of ifs.