Vikings fire General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah

Less than nine months after giving General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah a contract extension, the Vikings fired him on Friday, Jan. 30, triggering another major shift in their front office four years after they brought in Adofo-Mensah and coach Kevin O’Connell.

Though Adofo-Mensah had continued to work through the first weeks of the Vikings’ offseason after the team missed the playoffs with a 9-8 record, ownership deliberated over a change following the team’s end-of-season meetings. Adofo-Mensah was at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala., this week scouting prospects for the upcoming NFL draft, but Vikings owners made the move on Friday morning.

Executive Vice President of Football Operations Rob Brzezinski will lead the Vikings front office through the draft. The Vikings will conduct a “thorough search” for a permanent GM through the next few months, co-owner Mark Wilf said Friday.

“Ultimately, we felt the change was necessary in football operations and did not feel comfortable going forward into this offseason with the current leadership,” Wilf said at a news conference. “It’s not about any one decision or move. We looked at the situation cumulatively. We just didn’t feel confident going through the entirety of the off season, an additional draft, free agency. With this structure, we have an urgency to create a winning football team and establish sustainable success for our fans.”

The Vikings had signed Adofo-Mensah to a contract extension last May, months after they had given O’Connell a new deal that runs through the 2029 season. But sources said there was tension in the organization, particularly over mediocre draft results that had forced the Vikings to build a veteran roster that will face significant salary cap issues even with a young quarterback in J.J. McCarthy.

The Wilfs place a high value on their decisionmakers sharing aligned values, particularly after the relationship between GM Rick Spielman and coach Mike Zimmer eroded in the final years of the prior regime. The friction that had developed in the team’s football operation led the Wilfs to make the surprising move six weeks before the start of free agency and three months before the draft.

“There’s a lot of things going on,” Wilf said. “Certainly we’re positioned to have a significant number of draft picks. We do have a nucleus of players that is extremely solid here. As we pivot to next season, of course every offseason is critical, but we’re excited here about the possibilities with the draft capital we now have and taking a hard look at free agency and where we can supplement given the parameters in the league. We’re excited about it, but we have to get it right.

The Vikings currently have eight picks in the draft, including the No. 18 pick in the first round. They are also likely to receive at least one compensatory draft pick, for quarterback Sam Darnold leaving in free agency.

Wilf would not rule out Brzezinski, who has been with the team since 1999, as a candidate for the permanent job, though it would require Brzezinski to expand his role beyond his long-standing job managing the Vikings’ salary cap. The Vikings will conduct an “open process,” Wilf said, incorporating input from O’Connell and other members of the coaching staff.

Though Adofo-Mensah’s departure might mean O’Connell and defensive coordinator Brian Flores assume even larger voices in the team’s 2026 free agency and draft decisions, Wilf said the Vikings tend to prefer a “traditional structure,” where the GM has control of the roster with input from the coaching staff. The Vikings pivoted in 2012 from the power structure once dubbed the “Triangle of Authority,” where Brzezinski, the head coach and the top front office executive all reported to ownership. The Wilfs made Spielman the GM that year, and have used a traditional leadership structure since then, though ownership meets with the head coach after every game of the season.

If they consider a different structure and decide they “want to be nimble,” they could consider a change, Wilf said, but the co-owner on Friday gave preference to hiring a traditional GM.

The team went 43-25 in Adofo-Mensah’s four seasons, but it went 0-2 in the postseason and missed the playoffs by a half-game this year after a disappointing season that began with lofty expectations following a surprising 14-3 record in 2024.

Darnold, who reached his second consecutive Pro Bowl after signing a three-year, $100.5 million deal with the Seahawks, will start in Super Bowl LX. He will face Patriots quarterback Drake Maye, the player the Vikings tried to trade up for and select in the 2024 draft before New England rebuffed offers for the No. 3 overall pick.

“I still understand why we did what we did,” Adofo-Mensah said of not tagging Darnold in an end-of-season news conference Jan. 13. “The results maybe didn’t play out the way we wanted them to, but ultimately, I think that at the end of the day, we could have executed better in certain places. And I not only say it individually in terms of a particular player, but just executing better, knowing what the room was play-style wise, experience wise, and really put together a better combination of people, collective in that group.”

Adofo-Mensah’s firing could trigger further changes in the front office, where assistant GM Ryan Grigson will not be in charge of the draft. Broncos General Manager George Paton, the Vikings’ longtime assistant GM under Spielman, has a contract that reportedly expires after the draft; his long-standing relationship with the Wilfs could make him a name to watch in the Vikings GM search.

The Vikings hired Adofo-Mensah almost exactly four years ago at the age of 40. He took a path to the GM’s office like few in the NFL, including eight years of experience on Wall Street after earning economics degrees from Princeton and Stanford.

“Kwesi’s a forward-thinker,” Wilf said Friday. “Going forward, it was really about a fit situation and the best fit going forward. Like I said, we have strong people in the organization. All of them football-oriented, many data-oriented, analytics-oriented.”