NFL News: Vikings Fire GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah

• The Minnesota Vikings fired GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah in a surprise move, 4 weeks after the end of the 2025 season
• Minnesota was a disappointment, finishing at 9-8 amid frustration and questionable personnel decisions
• Did ex-Vikings QB Sam Darnold’s run to the Super Bowl with the Seahawks influence owner Zygi Wilf to act before the offseason gets fully underway?
• How might this impact their plans and the 2026 season?

Firing the GM Usually Comes Right After the Regular Season Ends

The Vikings firing GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah came just shy of 4 weeks to the day their 2025 season ended with them finishing at 9-8.

That they managed to get over .500 after a 4-8 start is testimony to head coach Kevin O’Connell’s abilities and a relatively favorable schedule. They ended up one-half game behind the Packers for the final playoff spot. With a little luck, they could have squeaked in, which would have been a minor miracle.

Still, when teams make a move of this magnitude to dramatically change how they run football operations, it usually happens on Black Monday or, at the very least, during the week immediately following the conclusion of the regular season.

This was unusual, and while it could be framed as part of the new way in which teams in the NFL and sports in general strive to be deliberative and not reactive like an angry fan, there is a strangely wide gap between an audit (or autopsy) of the season and such a fundamental change.

In short, if firing Adofo-Mensah was on the table, they would normally have done it sooner.

So…what happened?

Adofo-Mensah Seemed a Bit Overmatched

The rise of analytics has upended sports and has, in many ways, benefited it. But it has also led to a disconnect between those who have spent their life in the game in one capacity or another assessing players, circumstances, and strategies using instinct with statistical input as a tool, and those who rose through the ranks as Adofo-Mensah did in the numbers-crunching end and use the numbers as a safety net to explain what they did as though it’s an impenetrable shield.

Head coach Kevin O’Connell was a QB in the league and played, albeit briefly, for Bill Belichick.

According to ESPN.com, Adofo-Mensah was having trouble reconciling his new position with his start as a background contributor in the 49ers and Browns analytics departments. If the top football decision-maker in the organization does not have the breadth of experience to look at the game from every perspective when he walks in, it’s tough to succeed.

If his drafts had been effective or his personnel decisions worked, then it might have been fine. But they weren’t effective and didn’t work.

The NFL Draft is always an educated crapshoot. The Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Pro Bowl, and the All-Pro list always has latter-round picks and undrafted free agents sprinkling their ranks. There’s an endless list of “can’t miss” players who missed.

At the same time, under Adofo-Mensah, the one player drafted with him as GM from 2022-25 who was an All-Pro is kicker Will Reichard.

It would be fine if they got some functional cogs in those drafts, it might be a “yeah, well…” situation. But they haven’t even managed that. There’s some talent there in Jordan Addison, J.J. McCarthy, and Jalen Nailor. But there are no game changers among their draftees yet. Eventually, that leads to a rapid downfall for the entire organization. It’s imperative to replenish the roster on and off the field. And they have not done that.

Was Sam Darnold’s Super Bowl Run the Final Straw?

In the aftermath of the dual gut punch of McCarthy’s…difficult…first year as a starter in the league and 2024 starter Darnold taking the Seahawks to the Super Bowl, we’ll never truly know who in the Vikings hierarchy decided letting Darnold go in favor of McCarthy was the way to go.

Is it a second guess to say they should have franchise tagged Darnold to give McCarthy another year as an understudy when he’s not rehabbing a knee injury and would have gotten some low-pressure game experience?

It’s not a second guess if just about everyone was saying it.

And just about everyone was saying it.

Justin Jefferson celebrated Darnold’s success while lamenting the Vikings letting him go. That Jefferson is their marquee star and is coming off his career-worst season certainly didn’t help Adofo-Mensah’s case to stay.

Were they trying to prove they were right on McCarthy?

Did they not trust Darnold?

Was there a disconnect between the GM and the coaching staff?

The reason why they took that tack is irrelevant.

However, if Wilf looked at McCarthy’s performance with 10 starts, a 57.6 completion percentage, 11 TD passes, 12 picks, and a passer rating of 72.6 while Darnold was taking his team to a 14-3 record for the second consecutive season with the second one being in a Seahawks uniform instead of a Vikings uniform and he’s getting ready for the Super Bowl, then maybe he wanted someone to blame.

Speculatively, the owner would know who wanted to do what. O’Connell is still there. Adofo-Mensah is not.

O’Connell is Now the Power in Vikings Football Ops

No matter who they install as the titular head of football ops, the Vikings firing GM Adofo-Mensah clearly signifies there was a disconnect between the coaching staff and the front office. They stuck a numbers guy in the position of near-ultimate power in the organization and it didn’t work.

Perhaps the wisest financial and on-paper choice was to go with McCarthy, let Darnold walk, and stick to their plan from the time he was drafted 10th overall (two spots ahead of Bo Nix) in the 2024 draft. But Darnold is in the Super Bowl, McCarthy is a huge question mark making it likely they’ll bring in a veteran as legitimate competition for the starting job in the coming season, and the GM who made those decisions is looking for work.

When the odds for the Vikings’ draft strategy and how they will fare in 2026 come out, how will this decision be assessed?

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