The Vikings are directed to the draft next week that has four selections. Unless they acquire additional selections through trade, they will become the 20th team to select four or less players since the Draft moved to seven rounds in 1994, according to ESPN Research. Ninety -eight percent of the teams have made more selections during that period of 30 years.
The deficit is self -inflicted and to a large extent the result of two trades that the Vikings made last season to acquire the Dallas Turner supporter. But it is also a trend that covers several years. If they make their four selections as scheduled next week, the Vikings will have totaled 27 draft selections from the arrival of the general manager Kwesi Adafo-Mensah in 2022, tied in the second lowest total in the NFL during that period.
“These are things that we have planned during the last two years and we feel safe,” Adofo-Menah said Thursday.
Adofo-mensah has already gotten into its group of 2026 too, after having changed probable selections of fourth round and sixth round to acquire the left Tackle Cam Robinson and the Cam Akers corridor last season, respectively. Neither remains with the team.
The question is raised: What should be done to the unusual vikings approach to the draft, that the NFL teams consider the soul of the construction of the list? The situation, and the best performance of the Minnesota draft in the previous three seasons, is a matter of great weight within the team’s facilities.
Zygi and Mark Wilf owners have not yet ended a contract extension for adofo-mensah, whose agreement expires in 12 months, despite the fact that the team records the sixth best percentage of NFL winners (.667) during their mandate. Draft’s bad results have forced the team to convert massive incursions into free agency in the last two restrictions, and the team has committed to a cash payroll of $ 315 million in the League by 2025, not counting postponed, according to the list management system.
Its list also was the highest average age based on weighted snapshots, and it is unlikely that the classification will change after signing or signing five probable headlines this spring that is 30 years old or more.
Adofo-Menah believes that his free agent activity has opened options in the Draft, emphasizing on Thursday his desire to “be in a place where we are proactive, not reactive; focused on impact, not focused on need.” But drafts are full of uncertainty, and the chances of finding impact players increase depending on the total number of selected players.
That puts the draft of the decisions of adofo-mensah 2024 under scrutiny. The Vikings first sent the Houston Texans their second and sixth round selections in 2024, and a second round selection in 2025, to acquire the general selection No. 23. Then they used a selection of fifth round of 2024 together with the third and fourth round in 2025 to change the number 23 for No. 17 with the Jacksonville Jaguars. (They also received a selection of the seventh round of 2024 of the Texans).
In total, six draft selections were needed to acquire Turner, calculated by ESPN Analytics, approximately twice the value of selection No. 17 alone.
At that time, Adofo-Menah joked on leaving aside his analysis history as a “spreadsheet and a type of calculator.” Sometimes, he said: “You have to leave from there, take off Clark Kent’s glasses and have a championship mentality and balance for a great player.”
Turner’s game time as a rookie was blocked by two Pro Bowl edge, Jonathan Greenard and Andrew Van Ginkel. Turner played 26.8% of snapshots, a rate of less than 52 defensive rookies in the NFL last season.
When he was asked to visit the approach on Thursday, Adofo-Menah said he did not regret it. He said he acquired selection No. 23 to avoid a “moment of arms at the head” Draft Day while the Vikings tried to ensure that they could write a field marshal. When they did not need that choice to ensure the field marshal JJ McCarthy at number 10, Adafo-Menah said he focused on Turner because he did not know if he would be in position in the future years to recruit a player who the team considered so talented.
“I am quite hard with myself, I would say,” said Adafo-Menah. “When you try personal improvement, you stay in that standard, we all have that little voice that says: ‘We are good enough.’ And I am not afraid to question that voice from time to time and, again, to be very hard with myself.
“Ultimately, we don’t know how that answer will work, but looking back, we feel good with that exact approach and that thought process.”
Turner’s modest contributions as a rookie illustrated another trend that cannot be ignored. The only impact player that the Vikings have written in the last three seasons is the receptor Jordan Addison in 2023. McCarthy could join that list as soon as this season, and Turner seems to have more opportunities too. The corner Mekhi Blackmon, a third round selection in 2023 that was lost 2024 due to a torn acl, could resume a key role in 2025.
The success of the 2024 Draft will travel in the development of McCarthy and Turner. To date, however, the Vikings have obtained only 107 openings of players recruited between 2022-24. That is the second lowest in the League.
Anyway, the work of adofo-mensah does not seem threatened despite the slow progress in a contract extension, especially compared to the urgency that the Vikings showed when they signed the coach Kevin O’Connell again in January. Mark Wilf said as recently as March 31 that there have been “very, very positive conversations” about the future of adofo-mensah. When asked if an agreement is something he wants to get, Wilf said: “Yes, it is.”
Wilf acknowledged that “free agency has become a more important part of the dynamics of the team building” and said Draft evaluations take two or three years to be done correctly.
“Kwesi is part of our football leadership,” Wilf said. “We feel very good with the movements that he has made in terms of positioning, together with coach O’Connell and [executive director of football operations Rob Brzezinski] In terms of our salary limit position, our draft and potential position. And then we have all the faith in Kwesi. ”
