Adofo-Mensah Must Act Quickly As New Minnesota Vikings GM

The new Vikings general manager has had a meteoric rise to success in his relatively brief career in the NFL. Kwesi Adofo-Mensah was well on his way to a career in academics as a professor of economics, and he was taking that step by pursuing his doctorate at Stanford University.

But Adofo-Mensah did not take to Macroeconomics, and while he was discovering that, he went to a sports analytics conference in Boston and was able to hook up with the San Francisco 49ers in 2013.

After the John Lynch-Kyle Shanahan administration started their tenure with the team in 2017, Adofo-Mensah made the point of telling the two football men that there was a lot more to his job than numbers and he was interested in what scouts had to say about players. He did not want to be pigeon-holed as an analytics guy, a term he claimed he did not even know.

Adofo-Mensah had a successful run in San Francisco and moved onto the Cleveland Browns, where he worked under general manager Andrew Berry. Adofo-Mensah impressed his boss and was groomed for an executive position.

He was clearly on the Vikings radar, and after impressing in his virtual interview, he was hired, and introduced to the public and the media Thursday.

His introductory press conference focused on the building of an organization where every decision is based on sound thinking. The background for this was his time in San Francisco, where he studied what the late Bill Walsh had done for the organization.

If Walsh is Adofo-Mensah’s model, that’s a powerful individual to follow. The Niners became one of the NFL’s most glamorous and successful franchises under Walsh’s leadership, and his influence lives on.

Adofo-Mensah has tried to make the point that he is far more than an executive who will lets metrics, numbers, and analytics guide his every decision.

Vikings fan may be hoping that is the case, because quarterback Kirk Cousins has been able to string together four seasons with impressive numbers while playing for the Vikings. High completion percentages and eye-catching TD-interception ratios have been the story for Cousins.

However, when it comes to performing in big games, and dealing with hard-hitting defenses and overpowering pass rushes, Cousins has not performed like a championship quarterback. Vikings fans know this quite well, and his teammates have likely recognized this as well.

But one wonders if Adofo-Mensah will come to that conclusion when he studies the talent on the current Minnesota roster even more thoroughly than he has to this point.

If he doesn’t get overwhelmed by Cousins’ 66.3 completion percentage and 33-7 TD-interception ratio last season, Adofo-Mensah will have a huge decision to make at the most important position on the field.

If he is not blinded by those figures, Adofo-Mensah will have the impetus to make a hard decision. Cousins is scheduled to earn $35 million in 2022 with a cap hit of $45 million if he remains with the team. Trading Cousins would be the best financial decision for the team.

That is a decision that Adofo-Mensah will make after he hires the team’s next head coach. The Vikings have already interviewed Todd Bowles, Jonathan Gannon, Kellen Moore, Raheem Morris, Kevin O’Connell and DeMeco Ryans.  Adofo-Mensah may choose to interview other candidates as well, but he did not indicate whether he will go that route at his first press conference.

Bringing in a new head coach that will help build a more cohesive locker room is clearly one of the priorities. The end of the Mike Zimmer era was not a productive one as the Vikings are coming off back-to-back disappointing seasons, and that clearly had an impact on the overall mindset of the players.

Adofo-Mensah told the media he knows what the team is looking for in the next head coach. “We know what we want to find,” Adofo-Mensah said. “We want leadership, we want somebody who is going to value the collective over the individual, we want somebody who has a vision, who can communicate, who has a solid football foundation, who understands how football is interconnected and what that means.”

Adofo-Mensah has to prove that he is ready for this position. Vikings fans are more likely to get a hint on their new general manager’s overall ability to build a team by seeing what he does at the quarterback position than by the individual he hires to be the head coach.

The new coach will almost certainly need at least two years to prove himself. The choice he makes at quarterback will demonstrate his ability in the first month of the season.