EAGAN, Minn. — The Minnesota Vikings fired general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah on Friday, a shocking turn after an organization-wide failure to make the playoffs this season.
Owners Zygi and Mark Wilf tapped Rob Brzezinski, their longtime executive vice president of football operations, to lead the front office through the 2026 draft.
Editor’s Picks
Speaking to reporters Friday, Mark Wilf would not rule out Brzezinski as a candidate for the permanent general manager job but pledged a “thorough” postdraft search. Wilf said he will “lean toward” a traditional arrangement that would give the next general manager personnel decision-making power with “extremely heavy input” from coach Kevin O’Connell.
Adofo-Mensah, hired in 2022 as the first NFL general manager who rose primarily through an analytics-based background, declined to comment.
Wilf declined to lay out the reasons for the firing, including the extent to which it was prompted by a series of 2025 offseason decisions that led quarterback Sam Darnold to sign with the Seattle Seahawks and pushed 2024 first-round draft pick J.J. McCarthy onto the field before he was ready.
“It’s not necessarily a fair thing to talk about any one decision, and that’s the way we approach it,” Wilf said. “It’s a body of work; it’s a cumulative set of decisions. It’s four years of where we’ve been. We as ownership, and I know our fans, feel it, and our entire organization feels it. We need to get to a better place. This is strictly an ownership and organizational decision that we feel this is the best path going forward. It’s not about one player, one decision, one draft pick. It’s about organizationally what we can do the best for our organization and our fans.”
The timing was unusual, as Adofo-Mensah had given a postseason news conference Jan. 13 and had spent this week in Mobile, Alabama, scouting Senior Bowl practices. He is seven months removed from signing what the Vikings called a multiyear contract extension.
Asked Friday about the timing, Wilf said the team’s ownership group wanted to avoid a “knee-jerk” reaction.
“The most important thing was getting this decision right,” he said. “And like I said, we like to be methodical about all this, and we had our season-ending meetings and really took a deep-dive look and not just any one thing but over the past few years. And so we wanted to make sure we got the decision right. We talked to all the stakeholders, all the people involved in our football operations, and we really came to this decision in a methodical way, and that’s the way we went about it. This is about our long-term success. We have a strong basis and foundation here in this organization, and we want to make sure what positions us going forward to maximize our ability to strive and compete.”
Throughout the season, there was talk about an underlying “tension” in the Vikings’ building in league circles, sources told ESPN’s Adam Schefter. One league source told Schefter it had been “ugly” in Minnesota.
Wilf said the decision was “100% ownership.” Asked whether anyone outside ownership had urged him to fire Adofo-Mensah, he said: “No one was suggesting, ‘Kwesi this’ or ‘Kwesi that.'”
Wilf added: “We are in touch with everyone in the building, sensing the dynamic, how people work together. I think, again, it’s a good collaborative situation. People get along here. Everything was good. It’s strictly a professional decision on where we think the dynamic was best going forward. So yes, we got input from everybody [on the 2025 season], but nobody said, ‘Hey, you’ve got to fire. You’ve got to fire.’ I mean, it was about us as ownership. We said we’re not satisfied. We need to be better as an organization, and this is the direction we have to go.”
Minnesota had three winning seasons in Adofo-Mensah’s four-year tenure, and its .632 winning percentage over that period is tied for the fifth best in the NFL. But the Vikings are 0-2 in the postseason, and Adofo-Mensah’s drafts have been among the league’s least productive. The team’s attempt to draft McCarthy without taking a step back competitively failed this season despite a league-high $350 million cash commitment to its 2025 roster.
The Vikings have received only 172 starts from players drafted between 2022 and 2025, the second fewest in the league. They are one of 11 NFL teams that haven’t drafted a Pro Bowl player over that period.
Hired in January 2022, Adofo-Mensah was only the second general manager of the Wilfs’ 20-year tenure as owners. He replaced Rick Spielman, who had joined the organization as vice president of player personnel in 2006 and was promoted to general manager in 2012.
The Vikings charged Adofo-Mensah with overhauling the team’s culture, which the Wilfs believed had grown too sterile and tense under Spielman, and changing how decisions were made. A basketball player in his youth and while an undergraduate at Princeton, Adofo-Mensah never played football nor had he coached it. He was the NFL’s first general manager with a background primarily in analytics.
A former commodities trader, Adofo-Mensah took an entry-level job as an analytics staffer with the San Francisco 49ers in 2013. He spent seven seasons with the 49ers, rising to the role of director of football research and development, before the Cleveland Browns hired him as vice president of football operations in 2020.
