Updated Feb. 1, 2026, 2:01 p.m. ET

Football Guys in the NFL have many hobbies and desires. Chief among them is this idea that you must do things like sleep at the office, so as not to let any of your competitors theoretically outwork you and get an edge. Why no one has ever considered that they’re mutually feeding an endless feedback loop with confirmation bias, I don’t know. Nevertheless, the point stands. NFL Football Guys like to pretend that the work they’re doing is on a level of importance akin to working with atomic fission. It’s uncanny.

That may sound hyperbolic, but not when you hear how people around the league viewed now-former Minnesota Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah prioritizing the birth of his first child.

In the summer after his first season in Minnesota, Adofo-Mensah’s first child was born. He rightfully chose to take two weeks of paternity leave, even in the middle of training camp. Gasp, heaven forbid! If we’re keeping it real, that Adofo-Mensah took only two weeks to be there full-time for his partner and his newborn baby, while still working remotely, is ludicrous. To any rational person with the proper priorities in life, that’s not nearly enough time or active presence in such a formative life moment, training camp or not. To be sure, kudos to Adofo-Mensah for taking what he could amid the Vikings‘ ramp-up for the season, anyway.

Unsurprisingly, per The Athletic’s Dianna Russini, people around the NFL are not very rational when it comes to understanding what matters in our short existence on this floating rock in space:

The next summer offered more evidence that [Kwesi] Adofo-Mensah approached the work-life component of the role differently from many of his NFL peers. Following the birth of his first child, the general manager left for paternity leave, missing about two weeks of training camp meetings and practices and working remotely during that stretch. Word of his time away from the team traveled quickly around the league. Among some rival executives and coaches, it was met with disbelief.

In an NFL culture where many players, coaches, and executives proudly acknowledge missing the births of their children, taking time away to care for a newborn and support a partner remains uncommon.

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Reading none of this “disbelief” about Adofo-Mensah putting his family first is particularly stunning. Again, people in the NFL tend to think they’re changing the world as if they’re doctors, teachers, firefighters, or humanitarians. Once you understand that they approach their meaningless, spectacle-filled work in a similar way, going the extra mile without a second thought, it informs everything else. Still, it boggles the mind that people whose professional existence ultimately boils down to a children’s game on a 100-yard grid of grass would judge someone else for knowing that there is, in fact, more to life than football.

Take Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald. The second-year Super Bowl 60 coach diagrammed how he apparently only sees his young son for about half an hour each week during the season. That’s something to be proud of? That’s the sort of working culture the NFL wants to continue promoting? I can’t even begin to describe how toxic this is. To be clear, I’m judging Macdonald for not immediately breaking down in tears upon revealing that he only sees his child for a measly 30 minutes per week for almost half the calendar year. It’s almost like he bragged about it, too.

You can well and truly miss me with this kind of nonsense:

This is a message to Macdonald and all other workaholic professional football coaches and executives everywhere: Your work with a game is not that big of a deal. No one’s is. Dial it back. Way back. You could cut your combined working time in half, at a minimum, and get the same on-field results.

Easily. Get a grip.

It says everything that Adofo-Mensah was judged by his NFL peers for something everyone, everywhere should agree comes above what you do to get a steady paycheck. And it’s nothing good.