I actually think this team is way closer to a tear down than contender status.
There is a ton of fat on this roster that needs trimming. Prescott got the moon unfortunately, but Elliott, Lawrence, Cooper, and Martin are also getting astronomical salaries.
I wish this team would be proactive for once instead of always feeling like it is playing catch up to contenders by overpaying and trying to scrape into the playoff discussion.
I guess when you are pushing 80 there's no time to rebuild but I kinda feel like the team could do a quick retool if it would commit to a mini tear down.
It should have been trading away pieces like Elliott and Lawrence for years. Now that they have massive contracts they have no trade value.
But you feel like if they could turn Elliott, Jaylon Smith, Lawrence, and Cooper into handfuls of mid round draft picks that would be the best thing. Recommit to the OL and DL, saturate the team with more cheap talent, and try to give Prescott an "act two" in his 30s. QBs last forever these days.
Jaylon Smith (immediately) and Elliott (in a year or two) are the main two cases of "fat needing to be trimmed", although if Elliott puts up 1500/10 TD's this year I don't think you can really say that about him.
I think your main issue is that the majority of our talent on the lines have peaked and/or may be in slight decline, although in some cases they're still Pro Bowl caliber players (Martin/Smith, potentially Lawrence). Collins and Gregory are the only ones who may still be ascending, although just based on their age they're close to their peaks as well even if they have more time left than Smith/Martin/Lawrence.
Other than that most of our young talent is at WR/LB/CB because that's where the majority of the resources over the last 3-4 years have went, while they've only made nominal attempts at addressing the DL.
It's a win now team, the problem is they don't make win now moves in free agency so they're basically wholly reliant on the draft to find impact players. If this team went after 1-2 impact FA's instead of signing 5-7 guys on 1 year/1.5 million deals they'd have a better shot at a Super Bowl, but instead they're just in this cycle of plugging holes with average to below average guys and hoping they strike gold in the draft.
Our roster as it stands today, assuming full health, is top 10 in the league, so by definition they should be competing for it all, but there are always those 1-2 holes they think they can plug with JAG's that end up sinking the season.
As an aside, I think Cooper/Lamb/Wilson could be a perfectly fine WR trio, although obviously I'd prefer to re-sign Gallup if at all possible.