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The deal is done.
The Minnesota Vikings have their new general manager, Cleveland Browns vice president of football operations Kwesi Adofo-Mensah.
“Vikings hired Browns’ VP of football operations Kwesi Adofo-Mensah as their general manager, per source,” ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported on Wednesday morning.
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After the Chicago Bears hired the Vikings’ only other finalist, Kansas City Chiefs vice president of player personnel, Adofo-Mensah was deemed the favorite to become the 10th general manager in franchise history early on Tuesday.
Under a new rule, “the Browns will receive a pair of compensatory third-round picks for developing a minority candidate,” Josh Carey reported. The Chiefs will also receive compensatory picks for the Bears hiring of Poles.
Background on Adofo-Mensah
A former day trader, Adofo-Mensah, 40, made a career change, landing his first NFL job in 2013 as the San Francisco 49ers’ manager of football research and development before being promoted to the director of the same department in 2016.
He led the 49ers’ push to “develop and implement advanced quantitative methods for game strategy and personnel evaluation,” the Bears, which Adofo-Mensah also interviewed with, wrote.
Adofo-Mensah helped rebuild the 49ers franchise that parted ways from Jim Harbaugh in 2015. Promoted to director of football research and development, Adofo-Mensah helped the team piece together a Super Bowl-caliber roster without a top-tier quarterback in Jimmy Garoppolo.
Newly-hired Browns hired general manager Andrew Berry made an initiative to steal Adofo-Mensah from San Francisco by promoting him to vice president of football operations with the Browns last offseason.
Adofo-Mensah took the job.
Berry spoke highly of Adofo-Mensah in a recent Chicago Tribune article:
No. 1, it’s his general cognitive abilities. He’s a super, super bright guy, and that comes across within the first two minutes that you meet him.
No. 2, and probably just as importantly, it’s just people skills. You could see how he had been able to build relationships across a number of different groups during his time at San Francisco in a role that can be very challenging, because you have to be able to not only develop (analytic) insights, but communicate them and get people to buy in. And then the other thing was just his breadth of understanding of the sport and football operations. So even though he had formally just led the 49ers’ research group, you could tell that he understood team building, people, relationships and managerial skills at a much higher level.
Adofo-Mensah played basketball at Princeton, where he received his bachelor’s in economics before getting his master’s of economics at Stanford. And despite the analytics background, he’s more than just an analytics guy, according to ESPN’s Kimberley A. Martin.
“Kwesi Adofo-Mensah isn’t just an analytics guy… In CLE he (and Glenn Cook) are viewed by (Berry) as asst GMs. Kwesi A-M has scouting + contract management experience and helps AB w/all big decisions The dude *knows* football. #Vikings.”
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Adofo-Mensah’s Deal Was Struck Last Night
The overnight wait for the announcement may have been a formality after Adofo-Mensah met with various Vikings departments before his 5 p.m. interview in Minnesota. He was seen leaving TCO Performance Center with someone telling him, “I’ll cancel your flight.”
“Kwesi Adofo-Mensah had dinner last night with the Wilfs, Vikings COO Andrew Miller and EVP Rob Brzezinski. This is all still headed in the direction of him agreeing to become next Vikings GM. For those asking about the wait, it sounds like GM contract negotiations are a process,” ESPN’s Courtney Cronin reported Wednesday morning.
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