Spending doesn't mean you will win. You still need to spend smart and you still need to draft well and overall make good decisions.
Not spending limits you in your roster construction. I don't know why it's so hard for people to understand. The best teams in the league use ALL available avenues for improving their team. They do not limit themselves artificially with what's possible to achieve. They also concentrate resources into windows of contention. This means at any given time, if you are not spending you are competing against teams that are pouring resources into trying to win it RIGHT NOW. You will just always be at disadvantage because while 1 specific team will need to reload and take their lumps for spending too much in short period of time once in a while, the league as a whole will always have at least a few teams that are in that high spending mode chasing a window for contention.
Now... is it possible you strike gold and beat those teams while relying almost exclusively on the draft? It's possible. If you string together a few insane draft classes. But it's not very likely...
This gets peddled like it means spending in FA doesn’t work. The Rams won a Super Bowl by spending. The Colts don’t spend and haven’t won bupkis since Ballard got here.
I’m not saying the Colts should just spend mindlessly and I don’t think that’s what anyone wants. But, Ballard’s gotta cover his draft misses by spending in FA otherwise we’ll never win with him at the helm.