Didn't we equal our best record for wins in a season this year? Is this team on par with other great sharks teams? Not in my opinion. It is hard to compare across seasons however. But it still points to our finishing position being potentially higher than our strength as a side. (This doesn't mean we didn't earn our spot, you can only play who's in front of you).
Yes the roosters dropped that game, but I think if we swapped draws it's very likely our positions would have swapped too. They played Penrith, Melbourne, Parra, Cowboys, Souths, Broncos all twice, raiders, sharks once winning 9/14 games.
We played Melbourne and the Raiders twice, and the rest of the good sides once (I've included Brisbane as they were good most of the year), with two of those games being against teams without origin players (Melbourne and Cowboys). We won 4/10. Even if you say we would have won those two games against depleted sides anyway, our record against good teams this year is pretty poor.