Vikings coach Brad Childress and vice president of player personnel Rick Spielman held their post-draft news conferences Saturday evening and both touched a number of subjects. Here are some of their answers.

CHILDRESS ON:

-- Roster spots and expectations for this draft class.

"When you say roster spots, competition that kind of speaks to it. When you compete the best guy wins and so if somebody has to go you've elevated yourself because there has been some competition and you've got a better guy there. That's kind of the nature of our beast. We really pride ourselves and talk about it, talk about guys competing in the locker room, pitching pennies out here. It doesn't make any difference. We put a premium on guys competing and it's not always that way. Some guys look at it and say, 'I've got my position sewn up, nobody is going to push me.' That's what I like about our guys."

-- On whether the Vikings are a better team now than when they left the field in New Orleans after the NFC Championship game? "We lost a Chester Taylor, an Artis Hicks. Obviously those are our two losses. Time will tell whether these guys will adequately step up and take care of that. But really we're going to be a good football team. Now you get to see kind of the molding it together and see how this thing goes. That whole thing is a process. You can't recapture that. You'd love to be able to recapture that dynamic. And that's the same every year. Whether it's with the Saints or us or whoever played in the National Football League last year." SPIELMAN ON: -- Fourth-round pick USC defensive end Everson Griffen. "Very talented player. The biggest negative is sometimes his motor didn't rev all the time. But when you watch the Notre Dame game, for example, he had three sacks that game. This guy can play against the run. He can rush the passer. A lot of 3-4 teams also looked at him as a potential 3-4 outside linebacker just because he's so athletic." -- On having eight draft picks. "You're trying to build the back end of your roster as you go through. Some of those guys hopefully will make our team. Some of those guys will be potential practice squad guys." -- On seventh-round pick Ryan D'Imperio's switch to fullback, a position he hasn't played since high school. D'Imperio played linebacker at Rutgers. Spielman asked team scout Frank Acevedo to put D'Imperio through fullback drills during his pre-draft workout. "This kid was very athletic and caught the ball extremely well," Spielman said. "You're sitting there watching him [on tape] through this workout and watching him getting out of his breaks and catching the ball. I know usually those middle linebackers like to thud people. He just has to learn how to thud it on the other side." -- On sixth-round pick Joe Webb, who will move from quarterback to wide receiver. Webb ran a 4.44 in the 40, is 6-3 and 223 pounds and has a 42.5-inch vertical. "Some of the natural catching ability that he showed down at the Senior Bowl, especially through the practices, you're saying, 'Wow, this kid may have a chance,' " Spielman said. "He has to learn how to run routes yet. Pretty raw with his routes but just has some natural athletic skills with his hands and leaping ability. This is a guy that is very unique down where we were picking in our board. Another young guy that you can potentially develop with a position change and see if you can get something out of him. I'm not saying he's going to be the next Josh Cribbs or whoever, but he does have some unique athletic traits." -- On whether team filled biggest needs by taking cornerback and running back with first two picks. "I know the corner was the one thing that we definitely wanted to address even though we signed Lito Sheppard right before the draft. Toby Gerhart, you have to look at your depth and if something would ever happen to Adrian, knock on wood, where is your depth behind Adrian? And you've just got to make sure you have enough runners behind him in case something – I don't want to talk about it – but just always make sure you have good depth behind him. And Toby is a very physical runner. I don't think people realize the type of receiving skills that he does have out of the backfield and the type of blocking skill that he does show, especially in pass protection."