In the end it came down to winning the games we should have won and won comfortably and not getting flogged 3-4 times a season
That Knights game …...........cost us Top 8
If you could somehow put together a side that never lost against bottom eight sides and had our record against the top eight it still wouldn't be a recipe for success. In fact we only dropped three games against the bottom eight in 2016 - win them all and we'd still only have come eighth (maybe seventh, if we'd overturned a 166 f/a gap to the Bulldogs). That would have left us needing to play four consecutive opponents away from home and having quite significant off days: the Broncos in Brisbane, Cowboys in Townsville, Sharks in Sydney and then the Storm in the grand final.
Ok, this is all totally hypothetical. But there is a point: is this club's ambition to scrape into the finals and extend the season by a week or maybe two, or is it to build a genuine contender? If it's the latter (and it damn well should be) they have to find a way to live with, and occasionally beat, good teams even when those teams aren't wildly off their game or denuded by Origin/injury.