This season may be the most important of Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s tenure with the Minnesota Vikings. He and Kevin O’Connell have stuck their necks out for J.J. McCarthy, tasking Adofo-Mensah with building a roster that could help the young quarterback get through the ups and downs and open a Super Bowl window in the process.
The Vikings started by loading up the offensive and defensive lines. They took a step further by adding Jordan Mason to the running game and continued to add pieces around McCarthy to make his first year as a starting quarterback as smooth as possible.
Adofo-Mensah had a goal in mind.
“It’s the type of team that can show up to a fight now knowing what the fight is going to be and be the last one standing,” Adofo-Mensah explained. “You know the different types of games you can play, obviously, in an NFL season. But in a single-elimination playoff situation, you might have to play a certain type of game. And so we just want to build a type of team that was versatile and could win in different ways.”
The move sounds excellent on paper, but what if the Vikings must win a game by field position? It makes punt return one of their underrated needs and a puzzle Minnesota hasn’t figured out since Marcus Sherels hung up his cleats after the 2019 season.
Sherels may never go into the Ring of Honor. But if you look at how much Minnesota has struggled returning punts, he might have a strong argument. The Vikings have 17 punt returns for a touchdown in the history of their franchise, and Sherels has five of them. He also holds the franchise record with 2,480 punt-return yards and ranks first among players with 10.5 yards per return (min. 30 punt returns).
The Vikings haven’t returned a punt for a touchdown since Sherels did it against the Houston Texans on October 9, 2016. Among players with at least 10 punt returns since he hung up the cleats after the 2019 season, Dede Westbrook leads with 8.3 yards per return. Brandon Powell had just 7.6 yards per return over the past two seasons, and Mike Hughes (7.4) is the only other player to average more than seven yards per return during that timeframe.
When you have to go back to Dede Westbrook, you know the Vikings have a problem. It’s an even bigger one when The Athletic’s Alec Lewis noted Minnesota has averaged an NFL-low 7.1 yards per punt return since O’Connell took over as head coach in 2022.
Still, the key may not be making big explosive plays. It could be as simple as making the right one.
Powell wasn’t explosive as a punt returner, but there was a good chance he was going to catch the ball when it was in the air. San Francisco 49ers rookie Junior Bergen set an FCS record with eight punt returns for touchdowns during his time at Montana. When asked what the secret to his success was, he simply said catching the ball was the first thing he was focused on.
“You don’t have a play if you don’t catch the ball,” Bergen told The Mercury News during training camp. “Just try to make the first guy miss is the biggest thing. If you make the first guy miss, you’ve got a play there.”
Perhaps taking a flier on Bergen late in the draft may have been a good strategy, because the Vikings still don’t seem to have the return role figured out.
Rondale Moore got the first opportunity to fill the role, but he only made one return before suffering a season-ending knee injury. Silas Bolden was also a standout punt returner at Texas, but he hasn’t done enough to win the job with only one return for eight yards. Myles Price was impressive with an 81-yard kickoff return against the New England Patriots on Saturday, but he’s a relative unknown as a rookie out of Indiana.
It was almost fitting that Powell watched Saturday’s game from the stands. Almost as if he was sitting idly waiting for O’Connell to peer over so he could give him a cheesy grin and a wave.
The next few weeks will be loaded with speculation, as the Vikings try to figure out how to achieve Adofo-Mensah’s goal of winning every game possible. But if the Vikings don’t find a solution to the returner position, those efforts could be foiled at the worst possible moment.