And so...being in perpetual Purgatory for years is somehow better? At least those crappy teams are swinging for the fences, and have real chances to get better, instead of always settling for mid to late round picks under the guise of "success."
Yes, it is. First being in your 'purgatory' (I.E. being a decent team but not quite getting over the hump) does give you a better chance at, well, being better. Again, in the past decade teams that were making their first non-consecutive appearance to the Super Bowl had an average of 9 wins the previous season.
In other words, teams that are 8-9/9-8 type teams actually do have a
real chance to get better and it's far more common than teams that stink turning it around. Your assumption that being worse gives you a better chance to improve is just factually inaccurate. Teams that have 6 wins or less are FAR more likely (2.5 times as likely) to just be bad again the next year than they are to have a winning season.
Second, I would much rather watch a team that is good year after year, even if they eventually don't make the playoffs, go to the Conference Championship, or win the Super Bowl than a team that is bad year after year chasing the mythical savior first round draft pick. Because BAD teams don't make the playoffs, go to the Conference Championship, or win the Super Bowl either and on top of that you have to watch them LOSE a whole lot more.
To take another track, let's look at the other side: Since our last appearance in the Super Bowl, only 6 teams have won it--Chiefs, Rams, Buccaneers, Patriots, Eagles, and Broncos. In that time, nearly a decade ago, these teams that have won it all, have only drafted 20 players ahead of where we drafted (or could have drafted if we didn't trade our spot).
Are/were some of these players good? Yeah, definitely. Jared Goff, Todd Gurley, Vita Vea, and Bradley Chubb are in this group.
Is one of the players Patrick Mahomes? Yup.
But are some of these guys high profile misses? Do Jameis Winston and Carson Wentz ring any bells?
Are some of these guys who I barely know their names (if I know them at all)? Feel free to hop on pro-football-reference to look up OJ Howard, Derek Barnett, Shane Ray, and Jerry Jeudy if you have the time.
But the biggest point here is that in a decade, the 6 Super Bowl winning teams have only come away with TWENTY players in the draft who we couldn't have had if we wanted them. That is it.
This isn't the NBA. Teams rarely are just one player away from being great (even a QB). If you are just one player away from being great, your record usually isn't 4-13.
Being able to draft slightly higher in the first round (of 7!) is no sort of magic ticket to being a winning team. It doesn't give you a 'real chance' to get better. It gives you a slightly improved chance to pick your preferred player in the first round of the draft. That's all.