Analysis: Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s firing as Vikings GM rooted in frustration over the draft

Less than two months after he became Vikings general manager in January 2022, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah summarized his approach during his first free agency period by coining a phrase that would follow him for the rest of his tenure in Minnesota.

“I think when people look at teams, they sometimes do it in a very binary way,“ Adofo-Mensah said. ”They ask, ‘Are you either all-in or tearing down and rebuilding?’ And I don’t really look at the world that way.

“We’re trying to navigate both worlds. We’re trying to live in today and tomorrow, or the competitive rebuild, however you want to phrase it or market it.”

Even if the phrase ”competitive rebuild" became banal through hundreds of media mentions over the next four years, its original use neatly summarized the twin mandates Adofo-Mensah assumed after replacing Rick Spielman as Vikings GM: Fix the team’s straitened salary cap situation after years spent retaining aging players, and revitalize the core of the roster through successful drafts that would deliver starting-caliber players at various positions.

Adofo-Mensah brought an unconventional approach to the job, having come to the NFL after years as a Wall Street commodities trader, but the Vikings viewed him as a forward-thinking leader who could remake a football department that had grown stale in its final years under Spielman.

Four years later, Adofo-Mensah is leaving Minnesota after failing to deliver on one of his two mandates.

While the Vikings went 43-25 in Adofo-Mensah’s tenure, winning at least 13 games twice and capturing the NFC North title in 2022, they find themselves headed into another critical offseason, with an aging roster in need of salary cap relief after four years of drafts yielded 28 players who started only 172 combined games. The Vikings’ free agency moves, particularly in 2024, allowed them to circumvent some of the draft failures, but a lack of young, affordable talent forced them to pay for veteran players who could be more susceptible to injury. Rob Brzezinski, the team’s longtime executive vice president of football operations, spent the final years of Spielman’s tenure doing salary cap triage; he will do the same this year, while leading the Vikings front office through the draft as the team searches for Adofo-Mensah’s permanent replacement.

The Vikings’ lack of draft success seemed to be a constant stressor, leaving the roster without the depth it needed to weather injuries and forcing Brzezinski to cover draft mistakes with cleverly structured contracts that were lucrative enough to woo players to Minnesota without putting the Vikings back in cap purgatory.

Had the Vikings kept the 12th pick in the 2022 NFL draft, sources said, they would have taken Alabama wide receiver Jameson Williams. Instead, Adofo-Mensah traded back 20 spots in a deal with the Detroit Lions, who selected Williams while the Vikings took Georgia safety Lewis Cine. Cine played only 10 games in Minnesota without a start before his 2024 release, while the shortcomings of second-rounder Andrew Booth Jr. and fourth-rounder Akayleb Evans led the Vikings to pursue cornerback help through trades and free agency. After passing on the chance to take Williams, who has posted back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons in Detroit, the Vikings used their 2023 first-round pick on wide receiver Jordan Addison.

J.J. McCarthy, the 10th overall pick in 2024, was the highest-drafted QB in Vikings history and ultimately became the highest-drafted player in Adofo-Mensah’s tenure. He came to Minnesota after the organization had resolved to build around a young quarterback, and even though he missed his entire rookie season because of a torn meniscus, the Vikings believed they could win as he developed in 2025. Their lack of draft success, though, meant they would have to do it by spending a NFL-high $348 million on a roster filled with veterans whose durability and dynamism became questions in 2025.

Defensive tackles Jonathan Allen and Javon Hargrave combined for only seven sacks after signing deals worth a combined $81 million in March; one, or both, could be cap casualties this year. After missing on three cornerbacks they took in the first four rounds in 2022 and ’23, though, the Vikings were forced to explore solutions in free agency, re-signing Byron Murphy Jr. to a three-year, $54 million deal while adding Isaiah Rodgers and Jeff Okudah. Ryan Kelly and Will Fries were expensive fixes at center and right guard, respectively, with Michael Jurgens not ready to start and 2022 second-round pick Ed Ingram having been traded to Houston. The Vikings also re-signed Aaron Jones Sr. and traded for Jordan Mason, giving the latter $10.5 million over two years, so they could avoid spending one of their five 2025 draft picks on a running back.

The Vikings went with McCarthy after extensive group discussions rather than placing the franchise tag on Sam Darnold or entertaining a one-year arrangement with Aaron Rodgers. But they had hoped they could re-sign Daniel Jones and effectively make him the 2025 version of Darnold: the veteran quarterback who could keep them in contention if McCarthy was injured or ineffective.

“I don’t want to say overconfidence, but I do think him being here was something that we considered and thought would impact his decision,” Adofo-Mensah said of Jones in a news conference Jan. 13. “But ultimately, they are free agents, and you have to treat it as such. No matter what the conversation is or relationships are, free agents are free for a reason, and they’re allowed to vet all their options. And ultimately, we could have executed better around that.”

Even as their opinions differed at times, Adofo-Mensah and O’Connell’s relationship never seemed to sour the way Spielman’s did in his final season with Mike Zimmer, who viewed the team’s four third-round picks in the 2021 draft as a breaking point.

But keeping Adofo-Mensah might have required more trust from the team’s personnel department and from Flores (whose voice in roster decisions seems to be increasing) than the GM ultimately had. Brzezinski, the skilled cap surgeon who has been with the team since 1999, will instead lead the effort in an offseason when the Vikings need to clear roughly $40 million in cap space by March.

The decision the Wilf family reached Friday, Jan. 30, after several days of deliberations following their end-of-season meetings, ultimately seemed to hinge on the question of whether their football department could reach consensus with Adofo-Mensah at the center of it and continue the two-front strategy they had pursued after hiring him.

Heading into a draft where the Vikings will likely have nine picks, including four in the first three rounds, their owners decided they could not.