We’d know who was driving the Minnesota Vikings’ cultural change in an alternate universe where they retained Rick Spielman and he hired Kevin O’Connell. Spielman wouldn’t be the first general manager to fire a gruff authoritarian and hire a coach who relentlessly promotes collaboration with his players. It’s a common practice across sports: the tough guy starts losing, so bring in a player’s coach.
But the Wilfs fired Spielman along with Zimmer and, months later, the Vikings have a front office diametrically opposed to the “fear-based” culture Eric Kendricks loathed.
“We’ll set a tone and create a culture here where players will want to be around us,” O’Connell declared at his opening press conference. “They’ll want to be around their coaches. They’ll want to be in the building.”
“This really is a player’s game. It’s about these guys,” echoed new offensive coordinator Wes Phillips. “The days of getting on them and try to coach from fear is not going to work anymore.”
“I listen to young people,” said Ed Donatell, 65, who O’Connell hired to be his defensive coordinator. “And I seek, and I put energy into learning them.”
O’Connell and his staff heard the players’ comments and are making it clear that they will run things differently at the Vikings’ facility. The Vikings intentionally hired to brighten a place that had grown darker as Zimmer felt increasing pressure to win. But who ultimately decided to respond to the pleas of key players like Kendricks? Who’s the driver behind Minnesota’s cultural change?
There are three sources of power in the organization that remained after the Vikings fired Spielman:
- The Wilfs, who own the team
- The football people who the Wilfs trusted to help them carry out their GM search, including Rob Brzezinski and COO Andrew Miller
- Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, who the Wilfs hired as Spielman’s successor
The obvious place to start is the Wilfs. Mark and Zygi bought the Vikings from Red McCombs in 2005 and have cleaned up an organization known for parsimony and debauchery. They replaced the outmoded Metrodome with a stadium that The Athletic recently ranked as the best in the NFL. The Wilfs also relocated from Winter Park to a compound in Eagan. The TCO Performance Center is not only designed to get the most out of the elite athletes they employ but new housing and commercial buildings surround it.
Above all else, Wilfs are committed to continuity. They want to run the Vikings as the Rooneys do the Pittsburgh Steelers or Robert Kraft has with the New England Patriots. However, the downside is that an anxious culture was allowed to fester under Zimmer, a coach who was once nearly universally beloved in Minnesota.
The Wilfs were close to firing him and Spielman in 2019, but the Vikings stole a playoff game in New Orleans. They would have been justified in making a leadership change after Minnesota went 7-9 last season. However, that was during a pandemic where fans weren’t allowed to attend games, and there was no preseason. The Wilfs were justified in each decision, but it feels like things got substantially worse this year, and they wouldn’t have if, say, George Paton and Kevin Stefanski had taken over in 2020.
Still, the Wilfs are real estate moguls, not football people. They know how to make money on the structures they built around the TCO Performance Center, but they leave the football operations to the experts. It’s a sign of good ownership. But when they fired Spielman, they no longer had the counsel of a man who had been with the organization for 16 years. So they turned to a group of football insiders who were still in the building to find their next GM:
- VP of football operations Rob Brzezinski (aka Minnesota’s cap guru)
- COO Andrew Miller
- Co-directors of player personnel Ryan Monnens and Jamaal Stephenson
Like the Wilfs, each of these men was aware of Kendricks’ comments. It’s also likely they spoke with key players to gain insight into what went wrong at 2600 Vikings Circle. But did they offer a directive to their next GM to create an environment so different from Zimmer’s? Did they seek GM candidates who parroted what Kendricks and other players said in their exit interviews? Or did they find the best candidate, who also happened to embrace collaboration?
It’s incredibly likely Adofo-Mensah was the most qualified person they spoke to and that his collaborative approach is just how modern GMs run organizations. But Adofo-Mensah, 40, started as a day-trader and was a researcher for the San Francisco 49ers. He famously didn’t come with the baggage of a seasoned scout who has been on the road evaluating players his entire lifetime. He’s looking at his job from a unique perspective.
Spielman was essentially Minnesota’s alpha scout. He’d put in his time and now plied his trade as both a scout and a manager. Adofo-Mensah is more like a CEO. He has a business background and will outsource the scouting to people on his staff. The way he talks about O’Connell, it feels more like they are neighbors who watched football together on Sundays and aspired to run a team one day.
“When there are big decisions in life, a lot of times you like to think back, was there a moment when you sort of knew,” Adofo-Mensah said at O’Connell’s introductory press conference, explaining why he hired KOC. “We were talking about offensive philosophy, personnel, player evaluations, and it was like I was talking with one of my close football friends who I’ve spent hours and hours upon hours with.”
Now, here they are. One a former day trader, the other an erstwhile backup quarterback. They’re here because the Wilfs felt it was time to move on from Spielman and Zimmer and because the Brzezinski-Miller brain trust recommended him. Everyone shares some credit for realizing a vision of a player-friendly culture post-Zimmer. And that they were able to actualize it speaks well to the organization. Spielman was one of the most respected voices in the Vikings front office for a long time. But he wasn’t the only person at TCO capable of filling out a front office and coaching staff.
