Owning the Blame: What Needs to Change in the Wake of the MN Vikings Firing GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah

Here we go again. The Minnesota Vikings are on the hunt for a general manager after parting ways with Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. But are the team's problems bigger than a GM vacancy?

Former MN Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah did not come from a scouting background, but from the world of analytics. It didn't quite work out.

Leave it to the Minnesota Vikings to find a way to make a decision that isn't particularly surprising, very surprising.

Instead of firing general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah immediately after the end of the season, the Vikings' ownership group took the time to do a very thorough end of season review and only then, after about four weeks, decided to tell Adofo-Mensah in a manner not unlike that of Kuzco in The Emperor's New Groove, that he was being let go, his department

was being downsized, that he was part of an outplacement, that the team was going in a different direction, and that they weren't picking up his option. Just when it seemed to all of us outside of the Vikings' team headquarters at TCO Performance Center that the analytics-focused GM safely had another season to prove what he could do, the Wilf's pulled the lever.

It's hilarious how sports media has reacted to the firing. Many expressed complete shock, but others are doing that annoying thing where they claim they always knew there was something off in the organization. Yes, they sensed the tension. They understood that there were rumblings and undercurrents of dissatisfaction at team headquarters. Yep, wink-wink they absolutely knew that the Vikings' general manager's days were numbered. Those claims would be much more compelling if they had been expressed on the record (like Alec Lewis of The Athletic did--props to him) before Adofo-Mensah had been fired. Now they sound more like bandwagon blowhards trying to prove their insider status.

Paternity Gate

After the news broke about the firing, stories from sources within the Vikings' organization began to leak to the media. The paternity leave story about how Adofo-Mensah took two weeks of paternity leave during training camp in 2023 following the birth of his first child has been met with varying responses. Team analyst with the Vikings Entertainment Network and former Viking, Ben Leber, discussed how this kind of an absence would be nothing in a different industry, but in the NFL it is viewed nearly as a dereliction of duty. That Adofo-Mensah was gone with the knowledge and understanding of the team, and was also watching recordings of the practices could negate some of that feeling and, if the rosters he built were more durable, it might have. But quality depth has been a recurring issue during his tenure and not being physically on the field to evaluate talent presents poor optics.

Other stories suggest that members of the coaching staff, fearing more poor draft classes after the 2022 draft, began to take an active role in scouting. Still more stories talk of other front office personnel finishing the negotiations for free agent signings that Adofo-Mensah thought were too costly.

Who's In Charge?

Heaped together, these stories and others begin to create an image of an organization that doesn't appear to have trusted its general manager since as far back as 2023. So, for the past three drafts, the past three free-agency cycles, the past three training camps how have the Vikings been making personnel decisions?

Not only that, how has the Vikings' ownership group waited this long to address the problem? In light of some of these stories about Adofo-Mensah's struggles and the friction with the coaching staff, the surprise in his firing isn't that the Wilf's waited until 26 days after the end of the season to act, it is that they waited until 2026 to act when the dysfunction was becoming apparent as early as 2023.

And Now for Something Completely Different

In the aftermath of the the firing of Mike Zimmer following the 2021 season, the Wilf family was appalled to hear how toxic the atmosphere at TCO Performance Center had become--the "fear-based" organization where the head coach and general manager were nolonger speaking to one another. While they were in New Jersey managing their other business interests, the Wilfs' NFL team was in disarray.

Realizing the scope of the problem within the Vikings, the Wilfs acted decisively, firing both head coach Mike Zimmer and general manager Rick Spielman. Then they carefully interviewed potential coaches and general managers and settled on an offensive-minded head coach in Kevin O'Connell and an analytics-focused general manager in Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. Those hirings represented a hard swerve away from the defensive-minded Zimmer and the traditional scouting background of Spielman.

Satisfied that they had hired good people, the Wilfs flew back to New Jersey and let Adofo-Mensah and O'Connell, the kinder and gentler faces of team leadership, do their thing. That is exactly where the well-intentioned Wilfs made a huge mistake. Again.

In the two decades that the Wilfs have owned the Minnesota Vikings they have tried different organizational structures like the famed "triangle of authority" as well as a traditional, top-down general manager structure. They have tried general managers from a scouting background, and now from an analytics background. They have tried different kinds of coaches, players' coaches, hard-asses, defensive-minded coaches, offensive-minded coaches, jerks, and nice guys.

You have to hand it to them, the Wilfs are not afraid to take a chance on something different. But the one different thing they should have tried, is actually having a member of their ownership group stay in Minnesota to oversee their $6.25 billion franchise.

I like to laugh at the helicopter-parent behavior of Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys. He can't resist interfering in every facet of his team, even when he should let people better suited to the tasks simply do their jobs. But Jones would not have been surprised by problems in his organization the way the Wilfs routinely are--largely because he causes them, but he still would not have been surprised. That's the advantage of being there, in team headquarters on a day-to-day basis.

A Two-Decade Pattern

Instead, the Wilfs make their hires and then fly back to New Jersey. Over the past 20 years a pattern has emerged of them being dismayed and surprised at the state of their team. What? You're telling me Brad Childress' roster management and interpersonal style with Brett Favre was a potential powder keg? Oh, Percy Harvin was openly screaming at Leslie Frazier? Merciful heavens! Mike Zimmer didn't watch film with Kirk Cousins until after Cousins had been with the team for a few seasons? And no one was saying hello to Brian O'Neill in the hallways? How can that be? Kwesi was reportedly unsure about how a tightend of TJ Hockenson's caliber could help the offsene? These problems didn't simply sprout full-formed from the Minnesota practice fields. They grew over time and the team's owners would have known of them if they had been in the building on a regular basis instead of simply jetting in and sitting in a suite on game day .

Someone had to take the blame for the MN Vikings' poor drafts and lack of roster depth.

With no general manager expected to be hired until after the NFL Draft this spring, the Vikings now lean on their salary cap specialist, Rob Brzezinski, as their interim general manager. Is he really going to be the one calling the shots? Or, is most of the power over the roster going to be in Kevin O'Connell's hands? How much input will defensive coordinator Brian Flores have? In the power vacuum created by Adofo-Mensah's firing, the Vikings have regressed back to the "triangle of authority".

A coaching staff that appeared to have no qualms in wresting decision-making power away from the general manager over the past three years is now in charge. Sure things were dysfunctional for the past few years, but I'm sure the co-conspirators of this coup will be able to get along without strife and won't fight like crabs in a bucket. What could possibly go wrong?

Ultimately, the Wilfs need to decide whether they are really the owners of this multi-billion dollar sports franchise, or merely fans who write checks and, occasionally, fire people when the toxicity becomes impossible to ignore. If the Vikings' ownership doesn't change their approach to overseeing the operations, then we're in store for another cycle of organizational turmoil that will result in angst rather than championships.