What you have to realize is that compared to god teirs- hashirama, madara, juubi, BSM naruto, EMS sasuke -everybody is fodder.
So, relative to everyone else- sure they were obviously powerfull- however compared to hashirama they are useless.
-Hashirama as a child had no problem beating multiple fully grown adult Uchiha no problem lol.
In the ninja world there is a ridiculous gap between top tiers and god tiers. Top teirs are kakashi, Gai ( no eight gate), gokage, etc...
God teirs like Hashirama- are leagues above the #2.
- Note: Part 1 Zabuza is considered to be a elite ninja in the shinobi world- Part 1 kakashi is considered top teir. Compared to everybody else- people of kakashi's level is impressive. So for example- lets say there was a whole clan of ninja near part 1 kakashi/zabuza level- that would be impressive. However- compared to hashirama its a joke.
Conclusion- so yes, relative to current top teir ( naruto, sasuke, hashi, madara) you could call the senju fodder. However, that is misleading-- because 99% of the ninja world is "fodder" level in ability compared to god tier.
-I imagine it was like this.
Average Senju & Average Uchiha are in the top 20-15% of ninja. The elite of each clan are top 10-5% percent of the shinobi world.
The leaders/strongest of each clan are easily top .1% of shinobi world.
So, if you want to call a ninja who is stronger than 80% of his peers fodder sure go ahead--