When the Minnesota Vikings brought in Kevin O’Connell and Kwesi Adofo-Mensah in 2022, it felt like a package deal. The Vikings hired the two main figures of their brain trust about a month apart, and they were attached at the hip for each of the past four seasons as the Vikings won a division title in their first year and 14 games in 2024.
But when a team falls short of expectations, someone has to pay the price, and the bill came due for Adofo-Mensah when the Vikings announced he had been relieved of his duties on Friday morning.
The timing of the move creates confusion as the Vikings prepare for an important offseason. But with one side of the two-man brain trust gone, did the Wilf family decide to go all-in on Kevin O’Connell?
When you connect the dots, Adofo-Mensah’s firing looks like a vote of confidence for O’Connell. Adofo-Mensah preached collaboration when the Vikings hired him in 2022, and there had been plenty of mixed results. A series of meager draft classes and free-agent signings gone wrong were part of the case for him to be fired. Still, the biggest spotlight was the decision to let Sam Darnold leave in free agency.
Whatever side of the Darnold debate you are on, most general managers don’t survive when a decision goes this poorly. Darnold has led the Seattle Seahawks to the Super Bowl in his first season with the team. Meanwhile, J.J. McCarthy struggled in his first season as a starter, and Adofo-Mensah put a flawed team around him.
If the Vikings were as collaborative as he suggested, O’Connell and his staff may be partially to blame for this year’s collapse. But O’Connell also had several things going for him that probably earned him at least one more year in Minnesota.
The biggest decision was bringing Darnold to Minnesota. Although the exact decision-making process is unclear, O’Connell chose Darnold to run his offense and went on to coax the best season of his career. According to The Athletic’s Alec Lewis, some in the building pushed for the Vikings to bring Darnold back for a second year, citing questions about McCarthy’s readiness after spending his rookie season rehabbing a knee injury. O’Connell presumably advocated for Darnold.
There was also O’Connell’s previous performance to consider. He took Mike Zimmer’s team and won a division title in his first year as head coach. His second year was derailed when Kirk Cousins tore his Achilles. He led the Vikings to 14 wins in his third season, and this season could have been a better year if he had gotten better quarterback play.
O’Connell deserves some of the blame for how things turned out. But he built a lot more equity than Adofo-Mensah had in his four seasons on the job. The poor drafts and free-agent signings gone wrong were part of the reason, so was the absence of things that Adofo-Mensah promised to bring, including an analytical approach to the front office.
Those analytics were nowhere to be found during Adofo-Mensah’s tenure. The Vikings took a safety and a guard as first-round draft picks while he was in charge. He spent money on an aging center (Ryan Kelly) and two aging defensive tackles (Javon Hargrave and Jonathan Allen) when the drafts didn’t pan out. He gave away draft picks like they were Halloween candy. His first year, which was supposed to be his “competitive rebuild,” left Minnesota $48.9 million over the salary cap.
With all of the things that went wrong, O’Connell may have the trust of the Wilfs to fix it. It would make sense why the Vikings tabbed executive vice president of football operations Rob Brzezinski to run the front office before they search for a new GM after this year’s draft, and O’Connell can craft the team to his liking.
But it also could leave O’Connell as a lame duck. It’s unclear how much O’Connell has remaining on the multi-year contract extension signed last offseason. Still, it would be a unique situation if the Vikings searched for a new GM with the mandate that O’Connell remain their head coach.
As ominous as that situation sounds, it is also rooted in the present. O’Connell will be the most likely to make the football decisions, which could lead him to go into self-preservation mode. If he succeeds with his roster, it could either make him part of the new regime or sell himself to another team willing to hire him after the 2026 season.
It’s a move that could make next year meaningless in the grand scheme of Vikings football. But it could also be the Wilfs putting their trust into O’Connell after they didn’t get a return from Adofo-Mensah.
