The Minnesota Vikings have been without an official general manager for three-and-a-half months. They fired Kwesi Adofo-Mensah after he returned from scouting the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala. Since then, Rob Brzezinski, a longtime Vikings executive, has been serving as interim GM.
With the draft in the rearview mirror, Minnesota finally began interviews for the permanent GM. Candidates include:
- Detroit Lions assistant GM Ray Agnew
- Denver Broncos assistant GM Reed Burkhardt
- San Francisco 49ers assistant GM R.J. Gillen
- Buffalo Bills assistant GM Terrance Gray
- Los Angeles Rams assistant GM John McKay
- Miami Dolphins assistant GM Kyle Smith
- Seattle Seahawks assistant GM Nolan Teasely
- And Tennessee Titans assistant GM Dave Ziegler
Yet Brzezinski looms over the entire search.
He has been with the Vikings since 1999, dating back to the Dennis Green era and predating the Wilf family’s ownership by six years. During that time, Brzezinski has been involved in five head coaching hires, helped oversee Rick Spielman’s rise from vice president of player personnel to general manager, and later participated in the process that brought Adofo-Mensah to Minnesota in 2022.
That familiarity could naturally make Brzezinski the safest and most comfortable option in the eyes of ownership and the coaching staff.
According to Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer, Kevin O’Connell has been involved in Zoom meetings alongside co-owner Mark Wilf throughout the process. After spending the pre-draft cycle working closely with Brzezinski, it’d be understandable if O’Connell preferred continuity over uncertainty.
NFL teams make relationship-driven hires all the time. The danger comes when familiarity outweighs objectivity.
That’s where an independent party can be beneficial. After the draft, the Wilfs released a statement announcing that the search firm TurnkeyZRG would assist in finding the next general manager.
According to its sports entertainment website, TurnkeyZRG has been around since 1996. “We ran sports and entertainment businesses before we became executive recruiters,” the site says.
“We combine deep human insights with digital intelligence to uncover leaders who outperform – on paper and in practice,” they say on their main site.
That line could have been the selling point for the Wilfs. The common theme throughout this search has been Minnesota’s desire to find a leader for the GM role. Adofo-Mensah failed to bridge the visions of the coaching staff and scouting department and didn’t intermingle enough with staff members.
Chad Chatlos, managing director of college and coaching practice, will be working closely with Minnesota. Chatlos has been part of several vital search committees, including the one that helped Indiana’s football program land head coach Curt Cignetti in 2024. It only took two years for Cignetti to lead Indiana, a school known more for its basketball program than football, to win a national championship.
The search committee also fills a void left by Brzezinski’s candidacy for the GM job. He can’t be as objective about the search as he has been in the past. And if the Vikings trusted his voice before, it’d need to be filled by someone else this time around.
TurnkeyZRG sells itself on focusing on the business environment, not on personality traits that may or may not impact work culture. That enables the interviewer to select executives who will positively impact the culture, boost productivity, reduce bias, and increase objectivity.
That helps identify the best candidate for this job and also helps the Vikings avoid overreacting and just hiring the person who seems the least like Adofo-Mensah. Think about when a team fires a young, offensive-minded head coach and then hires a hard-nosed, defensive-minded replacement, or vice versa.
It’s natural to want to correct a mistake, and it’d be easy to overcorrect by replacing Adofo-Mensah, who had an unconventional football background that relied on analytics. Every outside candidate for Minnesota’s GM opening has a background in traditional scouting. But does that mean hiring someone who ignores analytics completely is the best decision?
Several candidates for the job have prior connections to the Vikings that could influence the hiring decision. O’Connell worked with McKay and Agnew with the Rams. Burkhardt and Gray were longtime scouts in Minnesota when Spielman was part of the front office. These are but a few examples of how TurnkeyZRG can vet previous experiences to find the best candidate for the job, not just the most comfortable hire.
The Minnesota Vikings appear determined to avoid repeating the mistakes that followed the end of the Rick Spielman-Mike Zimmer era.
In 2022, they aggressively pursued culture change after years of internal tension and a “fear-based” environment, as some inside the organization described it. This time, Minnesota seems more focused on balance than drastic philosophical change.
Whether the Vikings ultimately hire Brzezinski or turn to an outside candidate, the organization’s use of an independent search firm suggests they’re prioritizing fit over familiarity and long-term stability over emotional reaction.
