Brzezinski will be the “point person on all the football operations” through the draft, and Wilf said the Vikings plan to have the personnel department lead decisions toward roster building with “significant input” from Minnesota’s coaches.
“The way we view this role, it’s about leadership and leading an excellent team of personnel, coaches, scouts, all the rest. And he’s going to lead. He’s going to build a collaborative team, work with the team we have, and that’s where the expertise comes in here,” Wilf said of Brzezinski. “He knows where he’s strong at, and he’s going to know with his experience where he can lean on, and there are a lot of people to lean on in this building. Like I said, we have tremendous confidence, and I’m very confident in Rob as point person with [Head Coach Kevin] O’Connell and our entire football staff that will be able to navigate this well.”
Brzezinski, whose Vikings tenure began in 1999, just completed his 33rd season in the NFL and 27th with the Vikings. He is known across the league for his salary cap expertise and role in contract negotiations.
“Rob brings tremendous credibility and experience, understands our roster and has an innate ability to build a consensus with coaches and personnel in terms of the long term,” Wilf said. “Certainly, we will have conversations and begin laying the groundwork for a process now, but from a practical perspective of where we are on the football cycle, and in order to give ourselves the best outcome, we expect to conduct a thorough search to identify our next general manager after the draft.”
The decision to part with Adofo-Mensah was announced four years and four days after Adofo-Mensah was hired as a first-time GM and less than three months from the 2026 NFL Draft.
He had first entered the NFL with San Francisco in 2013 after working as a commodities trader on Wall Street. Adofo-Mensah emerged from the nontraditional background as Manager of Football Research & Development (2013-16) and then as Director (2017-19) before becoming Browns Vice President of Football Operations (2020-21).
Wilf was asked about Adofo-Mensah’s atypical background.
“Kwesi is a forward-thinker, great respect for him as a person and his family, and it’s a difficult day here. But going forward, it was really about a fit situation and the best path going forward. So that’s the way we came about it,” Wilf said. “We have strong people in the organization — all of them football-oriented, many data-oriented, analytics-oriented. We have a lot of tremendous talent in this building, and I’m confident, optimistic, as my brother, our ownership, we’re all very confident moving forward and optimistic that we have a nucleus here we can build off of with the team we have, the players we have and to move us forward in a positive direction. This was the best way to do it.”