Kwesi Adofo-Mensah played basketball at Princeton, has a master’s degree from Stanford, and has worked in the NFL since 2013. However, he’ll probably always be known as football’s Gordon Gecko. Adofo-Mensah worked on Wall Street before taking a research and development job with the San Francisco 49ers, and he hasn’t shied away from his background.
“The great part about being on Wall Street is, you make decisions, and they keep score very quickly,” Adofo-Mensah said before the 2022 draft. “So the assuredness of yourself goes away immediately. There’s, like, a humility that I have because you spent half of your week being wrong.”
The Wolf of Chicago Ave. immediately tapped into his background as a commodities trader. He sent picks 12 and 46 to the Detroit Lions for picks 32, 34, and 66. Then he flipped pick 34 to the Green Bay Packers for 53 and 59. After the draft, Adofo-Mensah guarded against backlash from trading within the division, and some fans questioned whether the Minnesota Vikings got good value on the trades.
“The chart is kind of a guideline. I’m not saying you shouldn’t follow the chart, but really, you’re comparing different alternatives,” Adofo-Mensah said in 2022, referring to trade charts like the Jimmy Johnson or Rich Hill models. “If your alternative is to stay and pick, that is some value, inherent happiness, whatever it is. If you trade, there is some inherent happiness, so if you’re more happy trading back and getting anything than picking the player you would pick, you should do that.”
However, the core issue of the 2022 draft was opportunity cost. Fans may have been mildly perturbed when Christian Watson dropped an opening bomb against the Vikings. They probably weren’t thrilled when Jameson Williams paraded around Ford Field after catching his first career touchdown against Minnesota. However, the core issue was that the Vikings passed on Jordan Davis and Kyle Hamilton at 12 when either player would fill a hole in their defense.
The Vikings made 10 selections in the 2022 draft but ended up with Lewis Cine, Andrew Booth, Ed Ingram, Brian Asamoah, and Akayleb Evans as their first five selections. None of them have made an impact in the league like Davis or Hamilton. Last year, Minnesota took Jordan Addison at 23, waited until 102 to take Mekhi Blackmon, and only made six selections. Then, they had a top-heavy draft this year. They took J.J. McCarthy at 10 and Dallas Turner at 17, waited until 108 to draft again, and made seven selections.
It would be easy to conclude that the Vikings decided to pick as high as possible and take multiple shots late in the draft in response to their first draft class. Perhaps they didn’t see value in trading down for mid-round picks. But that’s a myopic conclusion. Adofo-Mensah has emphasized that players develop along different timelines, and there are extenuating circumstances.
“Everything is different in different situations,” he said in January. “Lewis Cine didn’t have a rookie year, pretty much. He got the injury and now he comes to learn a new defense with Brian Flores, so I think that has to be considered. Then, Andrew Booth, same thing, learning from a new defense, adjusting to this style of play.”
However, Kirk Cousins’ departure is the most significant factor. The Vikings didn’t extend Cousins before last season and will incur a $28.5 million dead-cap hit on his contract this year because they had to place money into future void years to be cap-compliant last season. Minnesota also needs a viable plan under center to extend Justin Jefferson, who’s a free agent after this season.
Ultimately, the Vikings couldn’t leave the draft empty-handed. Sam Darnold is a practical bridge option, but people around the league no longer see the 2018 third-overall pick as a viable franchise quarterback. Therefore, they traded pick 11, a fourth-round pick (No. 129), and a fifth-rounder (No. 157) to the New York Jets for No. 10, and a seventh-rounder (No. 203) to take McCarthy.
Before the draft, the Vikings had traded a second-round pick (No. 42), their sixth-rounder (No. 188), and their second-round pick in 2025 to the Houston Texans for pick 23 and a seventh-rounder (No. 232). Initially, it seemed like the Vikings were positioning themselves to package picks 11 and 23 to send to the New England Patriots at No. 3 to take Drake Maye.
However, New England rejected Minnesota’s offer, and the Vikings pivoted. They traded pick 23, a 2024 fifth-round pick (No. 167), and a third- and fourth-round pick in 2025 to acquire pick 17 and take Dallas Turner. Adofo-Mensah left the draft with a potential franchise quarterback, McCarthy, and Turner, the best edge defender in the SEC. But he only has three picks next year – their first and two fifth-rounders.
“You never want to give up future picks,” said Adofo-Mensah. “You always want to stay pat. But I just know when a player is that much of an outlier standing out, we trust our board, and our evaluation process is pretty good. We saw how things were going. We knew that there were teams coming up, and we confirmed that there was a team that had a deal with the team, and I had to go a little bit more aggressive. But for players like that, who we would have taken at 11 [and] we thought were gonna go before we picked, you don’t end up regretting those decisions.”
In 2022, Adofo-Mensah took a risk by trading within the division, and some people were consternated over whether he got good value trading down from picks 12 and 34. It turns out that the biggest miss was passing on Davis or Hamilton. Two years later, Adofo-Mensah is creeping closer to going “full Rams” by going all-in to select McCarthy and Turner.
We won’t know whether those picks work out for a few years. As for whether Adofo-Mensah adjusted after seeing the results of the 2022 draft or was just trying to replace Cousins and do Flores as a solid, he probably won’t let us in on that.
