Adofo-Mensah.<\/a><\/p>\nBut there also may be reasons to assume better days are to come. Some of those came in his post-mortem press conference Tuesday at the team\u2019s practice facility in Eagan, as a reflective Adofo-Mensah evaluated Minnesota\u2019s build of last season\u2019s quarterback room.<\/p>\n
He acknowledged the importance of the spot, noting the Vikings have won at a high clip in recent years \u201cwhen we\u2019ve gotten a certain level of play at that position, allowing us to be explosive enough on offense to set the table for how we play on defense, special teams.\u201d<\/p>\n
And the general manager noted the position wasn\u2019t properly constructed to produce such play under center this fall, which was ultimately the Vikings\u2019 fatal flaw.<\/p>\n
When reflecting on the process that led to the decision not to franchise tag Sam Darnold, Adofo-Mensah said he still understands how Minnesota came to that conclusion. But he said the front office could\u2019ve \u201cexecuted better in certain places.\u201d<\/p>\n
That probably entailed entering training camp with more than one realistic option under center \u2013 a 22 year old, at that. Adofo-Mensah knows the path of young players \u201cisn\u2019t linear\u201d and that you never know how any player\u2019s first four or five starts will go.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have, obviously, a lot of historical studies about what those first few games are going to look like, or what that first year could look like in a sense. And, ultimately, that\u2019s how we tried to build the team, knowing that those growth pains could come, to be able to overcome them and withstand them in a certain sense,\u201d he said. \u201cSometimes, you have to go on incomplete information. And the information we had was all good, but it was, admittedly, incomplete and small sample. Ultimately, we trusted in the information we had, we trusted in our coaches, we trusted in the team we had around him to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it didn\u2019t pan out \u2013 not immediately, anyway. And there was no Plan B to turn to. Carson Wentz didn\u2019t even join the team until just prior to the start of the regular season. There was likely an assumption Minnesota would keep Daniel Jones in the building after he signed with the team midway through the 2024 campaign. Instead, Jones bolted for Indianapolis in the offseason, where he won the starting job in camp and went 8-5 in 13 starts this fall.<\/p>\n
\u201cLearning lessons \u2013 I think execution wise, you have to treat it as such,\u201d Adofo-Mensah said. \u201cNo matter what the conversations and relationships are, free agents are free for a reason, and they\u2019re allowed to vet all their options, and ultimately we could have executed better around that.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an ideal world, Minnesota wouldn\u2019t have made such mistakes. Had it not, it\u2019s very likely the Vikings would have been a playoff team again this fall. But there\u2019s power in admitting to miscues and attempting to learn and grow from them moving forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou try to make sure that you don\u2019t lock yourselves into what you did and thinking that it\u2019s always right, so there are those nights that you wake up and stare at the ceiling and ask yourself (questions),\u201d Adofo-Mensah said. \u201cI\u2019ve been accountable my whole life, and I don\u2019t think you run from opportunities to get better, so I want to always make sure that I\u2019m doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the proper mindset. It\u2019s Step 1 in the process of turning any tide. Adofo-Mensah doesn\u2019t plan on making the same mistakes this offseason. If his words are any indication, J.J. McCarthy will not be handed the starting quarterback job in 2026.<\/p>\n
Adofo-Mensah said the Vikings\u2019 internal discussions are centered on returning the quarterback room \u201cto a competitive, deep enough standpoint\u201d to be able to execute coach Kevin O\u2019Connell\u2019s downfield passing attack.<\/p>\n
Lesson learned. That\u2019s Step 1. The plan is solid in theory. Now comes the most important part over the coming months: The execution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kwesi Adofo-Mensah certainly isn\u2019t batting 1,000 during his time as Vikings general manager. The results \u2013 both in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":684967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2073],"tags":[7,9864,233,259,2529,6,9,234],"class_list":{"0":"post-684966","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-vikings","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-kwesi-adofo-mensah","10":"tag-minnesota","11":"tag-minnesota-vikings","12":"tag-minnesotavikings","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-vikings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/684967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}