Insider Says Kwesi Adofo-Mensah Was 'Never Truly Accepted' by Vikings

Adofo-Mensah coming from a non-traditional football background may have proved too much to overcome.

Jul 27, 2022; Eagan, MN, USA; Minnesota Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah looks on at TCO Performance Center. | Matt Krohn-Imagn Images

Since the news broke of now-former Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah's firing on Friday, there have been all kinds of rumblings from insiders and reporters about internal discord and power dynamics in Minnesota. The general sentiment is that while the timing of the move was surprising, many people within the league felt that this was a strong possibility.

Perhaps the most interesting report comes from ESPN's Jeremy Fowler on SportsCenter.

"I was told Adofo-Mensah was not blindsided by this," Fowler said. "He knew that the results probably weren't good enough, that maybe he would have to take the fall here. There were also some power dynamics in play between himself and Kevin O'Connell, the head coach. There were at least some whispers of that in the building. Remember, this is somebody with a non-traditional football background. Not a scouting background, more analytics. My sources believe that he was never truly accepted there from day one."

-What went into Kwesi Adolfo-Mensah firing
-Klint Kubiak’s weekend heating up@SportsCenter with @KevinNegandhi pic.twitter.com/WAmndpDqV3

— Jeremy Fowler (@JFowlerESPN) January 30, 2026

That last line is what stands out most. My sources believe that he was never truly accepted there from day one. When looking back on Adofo-Mensah's tenure, it feels important to keep in mind that he was a very non-traditional hire in 2022. Most general managers begin as scouts and work there way up the front office ladder. Many played football, at least in college.

Adofo-Mensah took a different route. He was a college basketball player at Princeton who then worked on Wall Street for a chunk of time in his 20s and early 30s. In 2013, he got his first NFL job working in analytics for the 49ers. Adofo-Mensah spent seven years with San Francisco before spending two as the VP of football operations under GM Andrew Berry with the Browns.

When he was hired by the Vikings in 2022, he had been in the NFL for nine years, but there was still quite a bit he needed to learn about the football side of things and building relationships with traditional football people. ESPN's Kevin Seifert wrote a good story about the inexperience of Adofo-Mensah and how an outside-the-box hire by the organization didn't quite work out.

Ultimately, Adofo-Mensah's tenure was doomed by the results. The success in the draft simply wasn't where it needed to be. The quarterback situation was botched last offseason. Had the results been better, relationships and power dynamics presumably could've been patched up. But they weren't.