EAGAN, Minn. -- In the summer of 2024, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah was preparing for his third season as the Minnesota Vikings' general manager. A reporter asked him to spell out the ways he had improved in his role since the team hired him in January 2022.
First and foremost, Adofo-Mensah said, he had learned the "dichotomy ... between leader and worker" as a general manager.
"It's something you just kind of grow and evolve," he said. "You get to this job by being a good worker. A lot of things are needed from a leadership standpoint, just outside of that role, that I've had to grow and adjust and adapt to. So, that's something I've definitely learned a lot through."
On the field, Adofo-Mensah said, "You just learn about a lot of this through trial by fire."
The former analytics staffer with the 49ers and Browns added: "A lot of things happen in theory when you're behind an Excel spreadsheet or a computer and you get to the job and you see the actual implementation of these things, and just seeing what that growth in development of a player looks like or different things like that, room dynamics. Just the experience of making these decisions, seeing them up close, seeing the actual implementation of them has been invaluable to me in my first two years."
The response was honest, thoughtful and decidedly worrisome.
Adofo-Mensah had been one of the least experienced general manager hires in recent NFL history, having never played or coached football before taking an entry-level analytics job with the 49ers in 2013. And now, two years in, he was acknowledging the concerns about his inexperience -- that he wasn't equipped to lead a front office, that his analytics background left him short on actual football instincts and that he was still learning the difference between theory and reality -- had come true.
It was impossible not to think back to that moment as a precursor to the news the Vikings announced Friday. In a move that was more surprising for its timing than its substance, the Wilfs fired Adofo-Mensah and replaced him temporarily with Rob Brzezinski, their longtime executive vice president of football operations, through the 2026 draft.
Owner Mark Wilf said the decision was not based on any particular decision or reason but "four years of where we've been."
There had been public indications of Adofo-Mensah's inexperience throughout his tenure, despite the NFL's fifth-best regular-season winning percentage during that time (.632). They included a disastrous first draft in 2022 and the ill-fated series of quarterback decisions that led Sam Darnold to depart last spring (he has since led the Seattle Seahawks to the Super Bowl) and J.J. McCarthy to assume the starting role before he was ready.
All told, the Vikings have gotten less production out of Adofo-Mensah's four drafts (172 starts) than all but one NFL team. For perspective, the average NFL team has received 368 starts from players drafted over that period.
There were also quieter indications behind the scenes.
Team and league sources thought that Adofo-Mensah's answer about leadership in 2024 came after the Wilfs spoke to him about being more accessible to the people who worked for him. The Wilfs believed he spent more time in his office, working through statistical models and long-range planning and not enough time circulating among staffers.
Internally, Adofo-Mensah also shouldered much of the blame this past season for failing to pair McCarthy with a veteran quarterback who could hedge against injury or ineffectiveness. Instead, McCarthy produced one of the NFL's worst six-game starts to a career in the past decade, an outcome the Vikings could do little about after Adofo-Mensah failed to finalize negotiations with free agent Daniel Jones and instead traded for veteran Sam Howell to back up McCarthy. The Vikings replaced Howell with Carson Wentz shortly before the season began, at coach Kevin O'Connell's urging.
Adofo-Mensah's unique background made him an oddity among NFL general managers, something the Wilfs originally believed would be an attribute as they sought to change their culture following the long partnership between former general manager Rick Spielman and coach Mike Zimmer. Adofo-Mensah didn't always work the traditional hours of a football grinder, sources said, but he talked often about finding unusual times of the day to get work done -- especially after his two children were born.
Ultimately, though, Adofo-Mensah's approach contributed to a level of detachment from the Vikings' otherwise traditional coaching staff. Honest sometimes to a fault, Adofo-Mensah once credited O'Connell for teaching him the importance of a tight end in an NFL offense prior to acquiring T.J. Hockenson in a trade with the Detroit Lions.
As it would in many organizations, the level of Adofo-Mensah's inexperience drew concern. Multiple sources said that defensive coordinator Brian Flores' unusual decision to let his contract lapse, before signing a new deal that will pay him more than $6 million per season, was based in part on his unease with the direction of the front office. When asked last month if he wanted to remain with the Vikings, Flores noted that he loved working for the Wilfs and with O'Connell, and loved living in Minnesota, but did not mention Adofo-Mensah.
Adofo-Mensah is hardly the only one to blame for a situation that will leave the Vikings in a leadership holding pattern until after the late-April NFL draft. The Wilfs rushed to sign O'Connell to a contract extension after the 2024 season but did not agree to terms with Adofo-Mensah -- who, like O'Connell, was entering the final year of his existing deal -- until nearly five months later.
That discrepancy led to obvious questions about Adofo-Mensah's standing with ownership, and the NFL was awash in rumors that the Wilfs would fire him after the season. The team had been eliminated from the playoffs on Dec. 14, giving ownership one month before the end of the season to determine what, if any, accountability they would seek.
Instead, they allowed him to work another four weeks. Adofo-Mensah gave his usual end-of-season news conference on Jan. 13, emphasizing on multiple occasions that he had final authority on roster decisions, and spent this week in Mobile, Alabama, scouting Senior Bowl practices.
But after conducting their end-of-season meetings with key personnel, the Wilfs gathered this week and decided that "we did not feel comfortable going forward into this offseason" with the existing structure, Mark Wilf said.
It seems almost certain that the Vikings will seek out an experienced executive to fill the permanent role, whether it is Brzezinski or someone from outside the organization.
The Wilfs took a big, ambitious swing by hiring Adofo-Mensah, who knew better than anyone that most organizations wouldn't have considered a candidate of his background. Their swing missed, and Friday's move brought their hopes to an end.
ESPN senior national NFL reporter Jeremy Fowler contributed to this report.
