The Minnesota Vikings fired general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah in the middle of the day on Friday. The timing of the move was curious, given that Minnesota’s season ended nearly a month ago and that Adofo-Mensah, right up until the moment of his ouster, was conducting business as usual, scouting out draft prospects at the Senior Bowl. Also: Considering that Sam Darnold, whom the Vikings let go in free agency last offseason, is playing in the Super Bowl for the Seattle Seahawks this weekend, common sense dictates that the Vikings franchise should have kept as low a profile as possible throughout the leadup to that game.
But the Minnesota Vikings don’t do common sense. In fact, every report in the wake of Adofo-Mensah’s firing suggests they avoid common sense any chance they get. After all, you don’t become the winningest franchise never to win a Super Bowl by having a fucking brain in your head.
Adofo-Mensah was hired by owners Mark and Zygi Wilf in 2022, after the Wilfs dismissed then-GM Rick Spielman along with head coach Mike Zimmer. Adofo-Mensah, a former Wall Street trader turned analytics specialist, worked in the front offices of the 49ers and Browns before being put in charge of the Vikings’ roster. His reported first choice for head coach, Jim Harbaugh, was spurned by the Wilfs at the last second for reasons that have still not been fully explained. The Vikings instead hired Kevin O’Connell for the job and then promised a “culture of collaboration” between all parties, in order to help prevent the serious internal acrimony that defined the end of the Spielman-Zimmer era.
Tick-tocks in the wake of Adofo-Mensah’s firing suggest that those prevention efforts failed. ESPN’s Kevin Seifert reported that the team’s current defensive coordinator, Brian Flores, entertained leaving the organization after this season due to “his unease with the direction of the front office.” Flores finally signed a deal to come back just a few weeks ago. Purple Insider’s Matthew Coller reported that Vikings longtime executive VP and resident cap guy Rob Brzezinski spearheaded an effort in the 2025 preseason to trade for aging wide receiver Adam Thielen. That deal went through, only to prove so lopsided that Thielen asked for, and was granted, his release before the regular season had even ended. Brzezinski will now serve as the interim GM at least through April’s draft. He will also be a candidate for the permanent job, which the Wilfs hope to fill after this year’s draft has concluded.
Oh, and apparently everyone in Eagan was mad that Adofo-Mensah took paternity leave during training camp in 2023:
But all of these “offenses” are minor compared to Minnesota’s egregious mishandling of their quarterback situation. As you might recall, the Vikings drafted Michigan QB J.J. McCarthy with the 10th overall pick in the 2024 draft, then signed free agent Sam Darnold to a one-year flyer deal to serve as bridge QB while McCarthy got up to speed on playing in the NFL. McCarthy impressed everyone during his first training camp, so much so that he was on the verge of stealing first-team practice reps away from Darnold before suffering a season-ending meniscus tear. Darnold proceeded to be a revelation in the rookie’s stead, throwing for 4,319 yards and 35 touchdowns while leading the team to a gaudy 14-3 record.
But the Vikings were quickly dismissed from the playoffs by the Rams in the opening round of that season, with Darnold playing his worst game of the year at the worst possible time. That meltdown was enough for the Vikings to let Darnold go in free agency. Adofo-Mensah wanted to build the team’s roster around an affordable rookie contract, and O’Connell had already declared “we have found our franchise quarterback” in McCarthy prior to Darnold’s breakout campaign. In theory, the Vikings could have franchise-tagged Darnold after last season to keep him on the roster, but everyone in Eagan preferred to use that money on free agency help instead. This was the culture of collaboration at work. A true team effort.
This is what it produced. McCarthy was awful all season, and that’s just when he was on the field. He appeared in only 10 games for Minnesota this season, and left three of those 10 games due to injury. By the end of this season, the team barely had a functional passing offense to speak of, clawing back over .500 almost exclusively thanks to Flores’s defense. Prior to McCarthy’s miserable showing, the Vikings’ braintrust was seemingly united in its belief in the quarterback, and that he needed no serious challengers for the QB1 job for the team’s 2025 training camp. Adofo-Mensah’s firing has given more than a few people in the organization license to reframe that narrative:
It’s difficult to ascertain who has been making specific decisions in Minnesota for the past four years, but it seems clear that it’s O’Connell who has final say over who gets to play quarterback for the Vikings. He wouldn’t have publicly declared McCarthy “our franchise quarterback” in 2024 if he didn’t. He would’ve forced the Vikings to keep Darnold, or to consummate the team’s weird dalliance with Aaron Rodgers this past offseason before ultimately spurning him. Here’s one more detailed postmortem, from Alec Lewis and Dianna Russini of The Athletic:
Even this week, one team source brought up the subject again, saying, “I would still like to know who made that final decision (not to sign Rodgers). I still don’t know. What I do know is it affected a lot of livelihoods.”
I didn’t see Aaron Rodgers save Mike Tomlin’s livelihood after he signed with Pittsburgh, but that’s now beside the point. The point here is that O’Connell deserves to own the QB disaster, and has no interest in doing so.
There were a lot of justifiable reasons for the Vikings to fire Adofo-Mensah. His draft record has been atrocious, his second-in-command (assistant GM Ryan Grigson) has an even worse draft track record, and there’s validity to the reports that he could never fully win over the people he had been ostensibly hired to lead. But it’s strange to think that getting rid of Adofo-Mensah, while retaining everyone else responsible for Minnesota’s ongoing humiliation, will change the franchise’s prospects for the better. O’Connell, who won Coach of the Year for his work with Darnold in 2024, has seemingly finished off a quiet coup that will allow him to run the Vikings as he sees fit. And yet, he’s never won a playoff game. Maybe getting rid of Adofo-Mensah will be enough to change that. Maybe O’Connell will finally land a true franchise QB and not let him saunter out the door this time. But the Vikings are a team that has lived on maybes for its entire lifespan, and this past week makes it certain they’ll continue to do so.