I know what you're saying and I don't disagree with it, but it kind of seems like a useless term then isn't it? Like every team is building through the draft then because every team still makes picks and gets a bulk of their new talent from the draft. The only way you wouldn't be building through the draft is if you traded most of your picks away for actual players every single year.Mothman wrote:As JEC334 indicated, "building through the draft" doesn't mean building exclusively through the draft. There's no need to take the phrase so literally. When a team says they want to build through the draft it simply means they want the draft to be their primary team-building tool. It indicates a point of emphasis and based on what the Vikes have done in the past few years, it certainly looks like they're using the draft as the primary means of re-shaping their roster and setting a foundation for the future.
What I more relate the term "building through the draft" with, assuming we don't take it to literally mean ONLY using the draft and NO free agency, is a team will always draft the best player available for the long term strategy of trying to acquire as much young and above average talent as possible, compared to drafting to fill immediate needs, often reaching for players at a specific position, who may not be the best players available.
Now it's impossible to say if the Vikings have drafted the best player's available without seeing their board and player rankings but I would say they've done a much better job "building through the draft" then most other teams in the past 2 years using public scouting analysis as the base of judgement of best players available. Of course when you have so many holes, it's much easier to draft the best player available! Everything fills a need heh.
during that stretch. And over the final half of the season, he had the league's second-best QBR on third downs. 
