Those guys are the ground level "street tough" types.

They're scary to the dude who runs the local bodega and is just trying to make a little money.

But someone skilled, and with decent training? They're not much.

Kate probably would have whooped them all in a straight up one on one fight.

But she's clearly out of her element scrapping with them in that situation, and she ate a LOT of hits. If anything, the criticism is better aimed at just how much punishment she was able to take, with relatively minimal effect.

Conversely, had those cats gone up against Natasha? Crying laughter emojis. Those dudes would have gotten washed, with ease. She'd have been bored with that shit.

I think they gave Kate a pretty solid balance between her potential, and her current actual skill level, relative to this type of threat.