That's more like the reality. I don't disagree with the saying, "Content is king", but Google often ranks you just because you have good backlinks. On-Page SEO is, compared to Off-Page SEO, rather weak.
"good backlinks" is the keyword here. Most people don't understand that. Sure a backlink is a backlink, but it's the quality that matters.
I believe both content & quality backlinks affect a site's ranking. Not sure about having one without the other & no one knows the magic formula. If a site has good content it makes it easier to get quality backlins & not vise a versa.
I agree that content is important, especially for the visitors. As for SEO with good content, I am not too sure how SEs can evaluate content on each web page. Uniqueness is the only key for quality content, and "as unique as possible" is the key I believe. IMO, I think G currently depends on quality backlinks to rank websites more than their "effort" to measure the quality of content because there are many websites that have quality content but not ranked anywhere in Google. Obviously, content is not the first direct ranking factor in Google SERP. Without any link, no website can rank well in Google. Without having quality content, you can manage to rank well as long as you get quality backlinks.