Zulgad: GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s upcoming moves will speak volumes about how he intends to build Vikings
Kwesi Adofo-Mensah was only a few months into his job as the Minnesota Vikings’ general manager in 2022 when he gave a candid interview to USA Today reporter Jori Epstein.
It would be the last time Adofo-Mensah was so open on football-related matters. His comments included calling Kirk Cousins a “good quarterback,” before acknowledging Cousins wasn’t Tom Brady or Patrick Mahomes and that teams with quarterbacks like that are more likely to win Super Bowls.
Adofo-Mensah also said, “the one asset where you get nervous about not burning it down is quarterback,” and later dropped the term going “full Rams” when talking about his concern regarding going all-in on one season by making trades like the Los Angeles Rams did a few years back to win a championship.
Why do we bring this up now? Because Adofo-Mensah hasn’t been as open since that interview. It’s a credit to Epstein for getting the responses she did, but Adofo-Mensah clearly was told that as the Vikings’ top decision-maker on football matters honesty wasn’t the best policy.
Since then, Adofo-Mensah has done his best to say as little as possible, while not coming across as off-putting. He’s succeeded more often than not, but, in doing so, also has left very few clues on how he will operate at key moments.
There have been few of those moments thus far in his two seasons as general manager. The Vikings essentially maintained the status quo for the 2022 season and won the NFC North by going 13-4 before losing in the wild card round of the playoffs to the New York Giants. Adofo-Mensah showed aggressiveness by making a key deal with Detroit at the trade deadline to obtain tight end T.J. Hockenson.
The Vikings made a few significant subtractions last offseason by releasing two aging veterans, wide receiver Adam Thielen and linebacker Eric Kendricks, but finished 7-10 in an up-and-down season that saw starting quarterback Kirk Cousins lost to a season-ending Achilles’ injury in late October.
Adofo-Mensah reportedly received a four-year contract when he was hired — as did coach Kevin O’Connell — but this will be the first offseason in which the GM is forced to provide significant tells on how he operates.
Adofo-Mensah tried to distance himself from his initial comments on Cousins and since then has been very careful with his words when discussing the quarterback. Still, Adofo-Mensah didn’t give Cousins a contract extension last March when the quarterback wanted to get it done, reportedly tried to trade up in the draft to take Anthony Richardson in April and gets closer by the day to losing Cousins in free agency.
This comes as speculation grows the Vikings could look to draft Michigan quarterback J.J. McCarthy at No. 11, provided he lasts that long, or could move up high enough in the first round to grab one of the top three quarterbacks, most likely North Carolina’s Drake Maye or LSU’s Jayden Daniels.
Quarterback is the most important item on Adofo-Mensah’s to-do list — things will heat up in a big way next week at the NFL Scouting Combine — but there are plenty other decisions that have to be made and will help decide how long Adofo-Mesah runs this franchise.
Standout edge rusher Danielle Hunter also is headed for free agency and coming off an outstanding season. Hunter had a career-high 16.5 sacks in 2023 and will turn 30 in October. Unhappy with the final year of his contract, he conducted a hold-in to begin training camp last summer and was rewarded with a reworked one-year deal that included language agreeing the Vikings would not place the franchise tag on him.
That makes Cousins, who also can’t be franchised, and Hunter as two of the most attractive players set to hit the open market when the NFL’s legal tampering period begins on March 11. If deals aren’t done with both, odds are they won’t return.
Wide receiver Justin Jefferson’s situation is another issue, not because he’s about to hit free agency but because he’s headed into the fifth-year option of his contract and is eligible for a rich extension. Many expected that extension would get done last offseason but that failed to happen and until the contract is complete the situation is definitely worth monitoring.
We know so little about Adofo-Mensah’s philosophy that we have no idea if seeing Cousins and Hunter depart would bother him, or is part of his plan. While it’s hard to believe something won’t get done with Jefferson, it’s also worth questioning what’s holding up things?
The Vikings have $24.7 million in salary-cap space, according to the Over The Cap website, meaning they also could have some money to play with in free agency. Will Adofo-Mensah look to use that money on players to make his offensive-minded coach happy, or to bolster a defense with which coordinator Brian Flores seemed to work miracles in 2023?
As much as former Vikings general manager Rick Spielman tried to tell the media nothing by using plenty of words, it got to the point where you often could guess what he was going to do because his past moves provided a roadmap.
We have no such roadmap when it comes to Adofo-Mensah.
Even his first two drafts don’t tell us much considering the first one, a 10-player class, appears to have so many misses, and the second, a six-player class, included two players, wide receiver Jordan Addison and cornerback Mehki Blackmon, who made immediate contributions.
For now, Adofo-Mensah remains a football mystery man. But the next two-plus months will force the Vikings GM to reveal his football intentions, even if he doesn’t say a word.
Judd Zulgad is co-host of the Purple Daily Podcast and Mackey & Judd podcast at www.skornorth.com.
