This Vikings season is going to cost someone their job — who will it be?

When you fall this far short of expectations, someone inevitably has to pay the price.

Sep 28, 2025; Dublin, Ireland; Minnesota Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah watches during an NFL International Series game against the Pittsburgh Steelers at Croke Park. | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

This Minnesota Vikings season is going to result in at least one person in a leadership position losing their job. That doesn't feel harsh or reactionary to say. It's just the reality of what happens in professional sports when a team falls as wildly short of expectations as the Vikings have this year.

The franchise came into this season with a real belief that they were going to build off of last year's 14-win campaign and at least get back to the postseason, if not contend for a Super Bowl. They rolled with an unproven young quarterback because they believed they had the infrastructure around him to help him immediately succeed. They loaded up their roster in free agency, to their point where their 2025 salary cash commitment of $344.6 million leads the entire NFL. Players wore "More is Required" shirts to emphasize their goal of getting over the hump.

Instead, it's been an abject disaster. J.J. McCarthy getting off to one of the worst six-game starts ever by a quarterback is the leading problem, but it's not the only one. The free agency haul has been a disappointment. The defense doesn't force takeaways. Special teams mistakes have been extremely costly. Everything has spiraled, especially McCarthy, during a three-game losing streak that's dropped the Vikings to 4-7 and knocked them completely out of playoff contention. The nadir — at least for now — was reached in Sunday's embarrassment of a performance in Green Bay.

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Someone is inevitably going to take the fall for this. Perhaps multiple someones. And while we're not going to call for anyone's job in this space, what we can do is speculate about the logical candidates to pay the price for this smoldering mess of a season.

The most obvious person who might lose their job, in a sense, is McCarthy. He's played so historically poorly through six games that this may just be a Josh Rosen situation where he doesn't even get a second season as the starting quarterback. There's still time for that to change, and McCarthy will certainly be under contract and on the roster next year no matter what. But if his production doesn't improve over the final six weeks, there's a real chance he's not the Week 1 starter in 2026.

When we talk about this season costing someone their job, though, we're more speaking in terms of non-players. And there are a few potential candidates in the front office and coaching staff. Before we get into those, it's worth mentioning that head coach Kevin O'Connell is almost assuredly safe. He's the reigning NFL coach of the year and the person primarily responsible for changing the organization's culture. He just got a hefty contract extension. So although he certainly bears his share of fault for this calamity, he's not going anywhere anytime soon.

I'm not sure that can be said with nearly the same level of confidence about general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. He also just received a contract extension this offseason, but it didn't happen as promptly as it did for O'Connell, nor does it guarantee job security. Even without giving any of the blame for the McCarthy pick to Adofo-Mensah — if you assume O'Connell was the driving force behind that decision — there are a lot of areas where the GM can be criticized.

Adofo-Mensah's drafting remains a serious question mark, even if his recent non-McCarthy first-round picks (Jordan Addison, Dallas Turner, Donovan Jackson) mostly look good. His 2024 free agent haul (Sam Darnold, Jonathan Greenard, Andrew Van Ginkel, Blake Cashman) was incredible. This year's group (Jonathan Allen, Javon Hargrave, Will Fries, Ryan Kelly) has been extraordinarily underwhelming. Re-signing Byron Murphy Jr. can be included in that. The best free agent signing the Vikings made this offseason was pretty clearly Eric Wilson on a one-year, $2.6 million deal.

The list of roster-building misses doesn't end there. Trading real draft capital for Adam Thielen, even if it may have made sense at the time, will go down as a major whiff. Contract extensions for T.J. Hockenson and Josh Metellus have aged poorly this season. Having Sam Howell as McCarthy's only offseason competition doesn't make any sense in hindsight.

If I had to guess right now, I'd imagine Adofo-Mensah keeps his job into 2026. There's probably been enough good mixed in with the bad to justify that. But it's certainly not the sure thing that it seemed to be at the start of this season, or even a month ago. It wouldn't be crazy for the Wilfs to look at this catastrophe of a season and decide the person who built the roster needs to go. And if Adofo-Mensah were to be fired, that would be bad news for his top assistants (Ryan Grigson and Demitrius Washington) as well as many others in the front office.

On the coaching staff, the person whose seat would seem to be the hottest is special teams coordinator Matt Daniels. Myles Price's punt return fumble gaffe at Lambeau Field marked three consecutive weeks where a special teams mistake has been one of the crucial, game-swinging plays in a Vikings loss. At some point, that probably has to fall on the coach responsible for that phase.

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An argument can definitely be made in defense of Daniels. He's working with a lot of young players, many of them undrafted rookies, due to the way the Vikings' roster is constructed. When Price makes rookie mistakes like not getting out of the way of a bouncing punt or fumbling a kickoff return, it's hard to know how much blame Daniels deserves. Is it his fault that players vacated their lanes on the Bears' critical kick return? The excellent play of kicker Will Reichard and punter Ryan Wright is a feather in Daniels' cap.

But again, these fatal special teams mistakes just cannot happen. And with each passing week where they continue to happen, it feels more and more likely that Daniels could pay the price.

A fascinating few months lie ahead for the Vikings as they finish out this shocking disappointment of a season and then turn the focus towards 2026.

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