Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - EMERGENCY POD: GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah signs contract extension

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

Matthew Coller talks about the Vikings announcing that GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah has signed a multi-year contract extension.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of purple insider. And this is an emergency podcasts as the Minnesota Vikings have signed their general manager, quasi a dot FOMENSA to a multi-year contract extension. We made it folks. We have now checked off every single box of things we've been talking about all off season as quasi a dapho, Mensa and Kevin O'Connell will now officially go forward together into the future. And of course I want to, uh, start off by saying, this is why we don't panic.

Right? This is why we don't freak out when it comes to this Minnesota Vikings group, because so often these things just end up getting done. It takes me back to all the Justin Jefferson rumors around this time last year, are they going to trade him? Is he going to hold out in training camp? And then they just were able to work it out and he signed. And as we went through this process, I looked at training camp as the time where if it wasn't done by training camp, okay.

Then officially we got something going on, but indeed there was not something going on. Mark Wilf was telling the truth as he always does. When we ask him about things like this at the owners meetings in Florida. Mark Wolf said that he wanted to continue to go forward with this leadership. He wanted to continue to have this leadership structure with quasi a da fulmenza and Kevin O'Connell. And he was confident that it would get worked out. And here we are today, the GM and the head coach will be leading the Minnesota Vikings for the foreseeable future.

So now to analyze quasi-adapthalmense's contract extension, I think we have to both go forward and backward, right? We have to look at what quasi-adapthalmense and Kevin O'Connell have done so far together and then what the expectations are and what the vision is going forward. So that's what we're going to do. But I think just to start off with a blanket statement about this. It could not be better for the organization to have this duo continue to lead them.

I mean, thinking back to the point where they took over, it was a very difficult spot. It was not ranked highly by all the rankings that were like new regimes and stuff like that for that offseason because they were in a very difficult position and this team has won a lot of football games in the regular season. They have operated as a franchise that people want to be a part of. And that right there has given them a cheat code to get free agents here.

As we saw this off season to have every draft pick coming in saying, I hope Minnesota was going to draft me. That was certainly not the case when Kwesi Adafel Mensah and Kevin O'Connell took over. So if we go back to when quasi adaphalam was hired It was a bold hire it was a different hire because quasi adaphalam did not have the same type of background as Rick Spielman and most of the general managers at the time around the NFL and I think what we wondered was

How are they going to get from point A to point B? How are they going to take this roster that they had run back time and time again with Kirk Cousins at the helm and find a way to be a truly competitive team when they had a really difficult cap situation, there was no future at the quarterback spot we didn't know what they were going to do to replace players down the road like Adam Thielen and Delvin cook and Eric Kendricks and when that offseason They decided to sign Zedarius Smith sign Patrick Peterson and bring in older players I certainly wondered is this plan really going to be different? Are we going

to see a different approach from the general manager? But I think what we came to understand was that the ownership had felt like they wanted to see it run back with a new coach, with a new culture, and then they would give quasi-adaphalment to the reins to take it the way he wanted to take it. But also we know that the will phone or ship is always going to be against going to the bottom. They always want to be competitive, which is a difficult position to be in for a general manager, because the way to the top is often through drafting really good players at the top of the draft. And when you're picking 24th all the time, that's a hard way to rebuild.

I mean, you're missing out on 23 other prospects and the Vikings have done well in the past to get players like Daras on Jefferson, but that's a tough spot to be in and quasi at Alpha Menta admitted to that first draft of trying to save the franchise in one draft, trying to fill every spot he could by trading down, acquiring as much draft capital as he could. And it all blew up in his face in 2022 with that draft. Now some of that is just bad luck. Like what are the odds that you pick that many times in the first and second

round and you get zero out of it? That is unusual. That doesn't happen very often. That was especially with a first round pick that contributed nothing. The second round corner that contributes nothing. I mean, you just don't see it happen in that catastrophic way. And yet even despite missing on that draft completely, they were able to take apart that roster from 2022 into 2023 without letting the

franchise go into entire disarray. And in the 2023 season, I think they still would have ended up making the playoffs had Kirk cousins not gotten hurt. But I think also if you're going to succeed as a general manager, you do need some serendipitous things to happen. And Kirk Cousins tearing his Achilles ultimately led to the Vikings drafting JJ McCarthy and executing the plan that they had laid out. And where I always will give quasi at awful Mensa credit is for him publicly calling it the competitive rebuild because though that was thrown back in his face or made fun of and that all what is a competitive rebuild kind of thing. I thought that that showed us exactly what they were going to do from 2022 to 2023.

It made the plans clear that they were going to continue to 2022 to 2023. It made the plans clear that they were going to continue to try to win with Kirk Cousins in 2023. And then they were going to go in the direction with, uh, you know, JJ McCarthy and so forth. So, you know, I think that what Quasi Adapha Menta has been able to do here is find a way to navigate one of the most difficult things in the NFL, which is staying in the race, not going to the bottom and rebuilding through not just drafting at the very top. And to get to the point where they were last year, I don't think that anybody thought that they were going to win 14 games last year, but in building through free agency and get to this moment where now it looks like it's about to take off with the young franchise quarterback. That is a hard process to get through. It's not like he took over a team in Chicago with Ryan Poles, just for example, where Ryan Poles was ready made tank tank, ready-made rebuild, and they were able to just draft Caleb Williams at the top and spend as much money and have a plenty of leeway and runway to fail in those first couple of years, that was not the case for quasi-adapthomensa and Kevin O'Connell, where they were expected to win and they were still able to do that.

So when we look back at how they got here, of course, we're going to say. They didn't win playoff games. They missed on some draft picks and they are not to the point where you want them to be where they're a legitimate Superbowl contender at the same time to have these seasons of 13 and 14 wins has shown an ability to build a team even around some failures, even when some things have gone wrong. Where you don't hit on draft picks that you thought you were going to hit on. You don't have the right guard that you expected as a starter or the next Harrison

Smith that you expected in Lewis scene or a starting outside corner, but they've also been able to find a lot of players to fill those spots anyway. And a big way of doing that was through free agency, but also through undrafted free agency where they have invested and invested. And when quasi enough, Almenza arrived, he was talked about a lot as the analytics GM because his background was so much in analytics, working for the San Francisco 49ers and then rising through the ranks with the Cleveland Browns. And in typical fashion in the NFL, the Wilfs wanted to go in a very different

direction from their previous guy. And so a lot of the analytic thinking in the NFL has often been tanking, go to the bottom, more draft picks, more draft picks, more draft picks. And it's been interesting to me to see. We see it out for me to navigate that a little bit differently than what we would have expected, but the thing that they still landed on was the rookie quarterback contract. I think we all know is the biggest hack in football.

And then I think also finding these free agents and you look, look at the decision to move on from Danielle Hunter and bring in Jonathan Grenard or knowing that somebody like Andrew VanGinkle could be a better version of himself here with Brian Flores than maybe he was in Miami and Blake Cashman. I mean, what a bet that they made on Blake Cashman who had had a breakout kind of year, just hadn't really done much in the NFL, but was on the rise. And I think part of his strategy has been to get these veteran players who are about to peak about to hit their prime like Jonathan

Grenard and Blake Cashman. And then also to look at the market and say, you know, Ryan Kelly is a really, really good NFL player. And for whatever reason, this guy is not getting as much money on the free agent market. So now we're going to go out and spend less money to get players that are proven and that strategy is risky, I think. So that kind of takes us, but we'll now we'll get into where it's going to go.

That kind of takes us from the past, which is that they got here with a difficult situation and were able to navigate it through. And the most important part, I think for the Will family is that they've created a consistently competitive product with also a very highly functional franchise that teams, uh, now are looking at the Vikings saying, how can we be like them? And there's free agents who are looking at the Vikings saying, how do we get in that building? And Kevin O'Connell pointed this out.

I think it was at the owners meetings where he said that most of the people that they had targeted in free agency, they were able to convince to come be Minnesota Vikings. And there is a lot of value in that, in the culture that they've been able to create here that starts with the hire of Cuasiadat-Felmenza, because it was very much toxic. Before that, they couldn't keep assisting coaches, they couldn't get free agents, they were in trouble with the salary cap, but the head coach and the GM were at odds. And we have to look at the way it was before from what he took over to now get here. And every single player to a man talked about that

NFLPA survey and the Vikings consistently, since quasi at our F Menta has gotten here ranking at the top, where would they have ranked before that is a pretty good question because I don't think it would have been very high. So they have now reached the point where they've got a lot of boxes checked for when you hire a GM, is it a success in the first three years? No they did not win any playoff games. No, they did not win the Super Bowl. And that has to be a demerit

against them to have two seasons where they're in that position and they couldn't get over the top. Where they win 13 games and 14 where you expect to go deep in the playoffs when you're able to do that. But those were pretty flawed and glued together rosters that were part of something that was going in a, in a bigger direction. Especially last year, this was supposed to be a transition year last year. And when they get to 14 wins, then all of a sudden we're in a spot where we're saying, Oh, well, they should really win now.

Right. And like they had sort of a victim of their own success last year, because if they had won nine or 10 games, I think we all would have been saying, well, this is, this is the way they are. They are on the way to where they're trying to get, but instead you win 14 games and now it's, hey, why didn't you go win the Superbowl? And look, they should not have melted down the way they did against the Rams. But going into this off season, it was really important to me in evaluating their thought process and this leadership to see if they could properly identify and fix the issues

that were there and that were very evident in Los Angeles. And I wrote coming out of Los, well, coming out of Glendale and the loss to Los Angeles, I wrote that the Rams basically took a spotlight and pointed it at every weakness that this Vikings roster had, and they went into this off season and addressed every single one of those things to give themselves a chance to legitimately compete. And from here, now it's the next step. Now it's how do you take advantage of the rookie quarterback contract? You've figured it out. You've given yourself the hack.

You've drafted the young quarterback. And the answer for them was to get a lot of veteran players and push the chips to the middle of the table. Now, maybe they're in a different world. There is another approach where it's a little bit slower. It's not giving quite as much money to Jonathan Allen or Will Fries, for example. I think both of those moves have some risk that comes along with them that, you know, Will Fries has a smaller sample size of starting and Jonathan Allen's last couple of years are not on the same level that we would have expected from him. And so can he bounce back and Javon Hargrave is coming off an injury and, and there's risks that they're having to take to push the chips to the middle of the table and create a two-year window here with JJ McCarthy to win. And that's how we're ultimately

going to judge the success or failure of this multi-year contract extension for Quasiadaphal Mensa. So the first part of it, if you're grading it, went about as well as you could have expected outside of a single draft that went really badly and outside of two playoff games that both of them they should have won those games now Los Angeles you could say was a stronger team than maybe the regular season. Indicated but when you win 14 games you should be the stronger team and the loss against the Giants in 2022 was pretty egregious when we look at that Giants team and what they did the following week. So when I look at the totality of the first part of Quasi-Odafo-Mensa, I think that they brought themselves to the point where they overachieving and ultimately got exposed for that in this longer process of building a championship contender. And now is the moment that they've arrived in that spot. And I feel the same for Quacey as I do for Kevin O'Connell, where we all know what the next step needs to be. We all know that the next step needs to be creating a team that can win in the playoffs, which they have gone out this off season and tried

to do. And the reality is we all know the other thing, which is that the futures of Quasidat-Felmenza and Kevin O'Connell do rest a lot on JJ McCarthy and JJ McCarthy's success that when you draft your franchise quarterback and you put them with a team like this and you set the bar as high as you set it, then we've reached the spot where now you are evaluated pretty harshly. And the fact that you've won 13 and you've won 14 games now says go do even more. And that's where I look at also process and results. I think the process has been very good to draft JJ McCarthy and make sure that you're lining up and they talked about this lining up the year that you need a quarterback with the year that there's a really good quarterback draft. I mean, imagine if you're some of the teams that are haphazardly going about this roster building thing

which I think is a fairly high percentage of the league to be honest with you and And you're just going into every year like oh wait now we need a quarterback like some of these teams that went into this year if you're the New Orleans Saints and you went into this year and Having extended Derek Carr and then you need a quarterback all of a sudden went into this year, if you're the new Orleans saints and you went into this year and having extended Derek Carr and then you need a quarterback all of a sudden, I mean, you're just lost at the wheel. So they were able to line that up. And I think the main, the main thing that comes to mind with quasi-dafile Menta is that it's, it's thought out and it's planned out and it, and they've stuck to those plans. And that's what you want from your leadership because once we got past 2019 with the Spielman and Zimmer leadership, we saw what it looks like to just be in

panic mode every off season and taking hopes and dreams types of swings at, you know, Hey, maybe, uh, Michael Pierce will be the guy to save the franchise. Maybe if we add Delvin Tomlinson, maybe if we trade for Chris Herndon, I mean things like that, maybe if we get a punter slash kicker, he can do both and we'll save a roster spot. Things like that did not seem very well planned, very well thought out. They seemed very reactionary and very panicky.

And now there's very few things that we could say that for with this leadership. So I think it's very important that they were able to get this done with quasi a da Fomenta and have these two tied together for their futures. And also just in general, getting them done together in the same off season, not going into next year as some sort of lame duck type of situation. I think that's also really important too to take any drama off the table, any question of who's really leading this team and that sort of thing. And we saw a little bit of that from the typical kind of people who like to stoke the fire. But I always thought that if we got to the point of training camp, then it's what's going

on. This doesn't seem right, but getting all the stuff done for the off season, getting the draft finished and then taking care of the extension always kind of made sense. I thought it would be done a little bit earlier, but here we are and it's finished. So I want your reactions. I'm going to read you the ownership and what they had to say along with quasi-dafile Mensa in the press release. Do you like it? Are you good with this? I think that the Minnesota Vikings organization standing here today has its best chance to chase a Superbowl since they walked off the field in Philadelphia in 2017.

And I really remember in 2019 when they walked off the field in San Francisco thinking, I don't know what the path back to this moment is. I don't know how they're going to deal with this team that had its run and didn't get it done. And now they have to rebuild it. And for a couple of years, they bumbled around in the dark. And it has not felt like that over the last couple of years, there's going to be things always that go wrong. There's going to be signings, there's going to be draft picks. And a lot of it is how you're able to react and respond to that. And I also want to point out too, that there has been a little bit

of, well, it's, you know, this person made that draft pick or this person was really in charge of that free agent signing or whatever. You know, clearly, uh, Brian Flores wanted like Cashman. He wanted Andrew van Ginkle. We know that we know that Kevin O'Connell wanted Jordan Addison in the draft. But to me, this is what the Wilfs were looking for when they hired quasi at awful Mensa, they were looking for a collaborative situation where it was not just the GM goes and gets the groceries and then the coach just stands in the corner and coaches. They wanted everybody having a seat at that table and they wanted the general manager

to be in charge of going out and getting players that his coaches want, getting them signed to contracts. Rob Brzezinski, of course, is a massive part of this organization and he is still here. And the other note is that they have made Demetrius Washington and Ryan Gregson their assistant general managers and those guys are the right hand, I guess maybe both hands for a Quasirafo Mensa,

the right hand men to Quasirafo Mensa. So they get bumped up as part of this as well. So what do we think? Do we like this? Are we good with this? I mean, I think the answer should be clearly yes. You have one of the best coaches in the league. You have a general manager who has been able to build a team without going to the bottom, without running into some great draft pick. to the bottom without, uh, running into some great draft pick. And they have, I think one of the most complete rosters in the NFL. And certainly you would love to say, Oh, while they're signing this extension after winning their third Superbowl in a row, that's not often how it works.

So you you're making a bet for the future. If you continue to do things this way with what you've set up, will you win? And I think the odds are in their favor, or at least history is in their favor with JJ McCarthy and this plan. So let's talk a little more about it. Uh, drop in the comments here and I'll read you what's the ownership and quasi had to say. But, uh, I want your takes on the Vikings getting this done, but it also says, and it's just important to hammer this home that now that they

have an organization that functions in the way that it does, we probably just need to stop with some of the, and we should have a long time ago, some of the, like what's going on there? Is there something behind the scenes, something nefarious going on? Or they try, there's always, I guess, a lot of drama that people try to create because we're bored and they only play 17 games a year, but it's always been the smarter play with this leadership group. And I know the Vikings history would suggest there's always something

going on right in the past, but with this leadership group, it's always been better to stay the course with them and assume that these things are going to work themselves out on their own timeline. And because we're all looking for news every day and we're all online all the time and where, where is this? Why isn't it happening? Well, some of these things have to play themselves out and that's what negotiations are and so forth.

And even when I was just talking about this yesterday, my thought was, well, they were pretty busy during free agency and the draft. So now would make sense to get this done. And here we are. It is done. So here is the, uh, the statements from ownership. Mark Wilf said, Wasey's dedication and forward thinking approach have been instrumental in shaping our roster and future.

And we're confident that under the guidance of him and Kevin O'Connell, we will continue to compete at the highest level. And what Ziggy Wilf said was Quacey's commitment to building a championship caliber team and his ability to collaborate effectively and make bold calculated decisions has positioned the Vikings for long-term success and quasi da Fomenta said this extension signifies We are on solid ground when the long-term vision that we have set and you know I like that description from quasi

Adaphal Mensa and I think that that is, is right. And that's how I would describe it is solid ground for the vision that they've set that when we can see it, when we could pull back and we can see the entire thing and make sense of it, we can see the, all right, try to compete right away, take down a lot of the key pieces. And I always want to go back to this and I always want to bring it up because I think it's really important to mention how many general managers would

look at a 13 win team and say, we should move on from several of the key players there. If not many of the key players there, Delvin Tomlinson, Delvin cook, Adam Thielen, Eric Kendricks. Like these are all veteran players. I mean, that were stars in the league or, or highly paid or pro bowlers. And they decided to let them all go. And Patrick Peterson as well. They decided to let them all go and move on from a 13 win team. You just don't see that in the NFL.

And I think when Ziggy, Wilf talks about kind of the boldness of that. Well, that's what they needed to do. And that was the smart approach because they didn't believe in some of the, the fake results of winning a bunch of games at the end in 2022, they did not believe that those results were really indicative of what this was going to be. And I think that that right there is probably Quasi-Adolfo Menta's best moment so far, is that, I mean, it's certainly true that this last off season where they signed Granada, Van Ginkle and Cashman is a great moment for them and drafting the

rookie quarterback and not signing a broken Kirk Cousins who now is a backup in Atlanta. Okay. That's that's big, but that's where they were always headed. That's what they were always going to do. Right. But the hardest moment had to have been to move on from those veteran players after winning 13 games, because there must have been a very big pull.

And I'm sure this would be for anybody, right? When you see your team win with a certain group of players win as much as they did. And I'll always kind of wonder if they had won a playoff game there, would that have changed anything? Maybe the playoff game losing it was the best thing that could have happened for quasi a daful Mensa because it allowed him to stay the course. But, uh, as far as that off season, I think that that was where you hire quasi a daful Mensa to understand that these results were not real, that these results were not

repeatable to win eight games at the final buzzer. That's not something you could do every year to also project forward that while Adam Thielen is still a good receiver for the Carolina Panthers, it was better to draft another receiver in the first round in a good receiver draft that had Zay Flowers and Jordan Addison and a couple other guys I forget, but Jackson Smith, the jigbo was another guy that they were going to have some opportunities where they were drafting to take another wide receiver at that point.

And even with someone like Eric Kendricks, where you love the guy, but if you're projecting forward, that's not something that's going to work. The running back, an expensive older running back coming off of a year where he started to fade in the second half, but these are very popular players that they moved on from. So if you're trying to pinpoint one thing that would give you confidence for where this is going to go in the future, I think it's that. I think it's the ability to properly evaluate what just happened. And I don't think that every team in the league is actually very good at this, to be able to properly evaluate what just happened. And that includes this last off season, looking at it and

saying the interior offensive line, it's time. What's happening in the league right now with all the great defensive tackles, at some point you probably have to go beat Jaylen Carter, right? And when that day comes, you need a center and two guards who can handle Jaylen Carter because that's what broke down when the Rams lost to the Philadelphia Eagles. And there's so many good teams that rush and blitz and throw confusing stuff at offenses that that's now a position you need to invest in. And that was not rigid. It was not sticking to traditional analytics, positional value, which would

not look at the center and guard positions as ones you want to spend on. So I think both in the 2023 off season and this off season, they were able to look at what was going on and properly evaluate it and then make the decisions based on what they had just seen. And in coming out of 2022, that was much harder than it is this year. I think this year was easier because you had all the cap space to deal with and there wasn't going to be any sort of pain involved like there was going from 2022 to 2023. So it feels like as they sign this extension that the quasi Adapha Mensa and Kevin O'Connell eras are really truly beginning right now. And we have sample sizes to see that they are competent at their jobs.

Are they great at their jobs? That, that I think we're going to find out is there true greatness here that we're going to find out. Like, is it a Kansas city? Is it a team that's going to compete for super bowls every single year? I would throw Baltimore where Buffalo has gotten to those types of teams where it's every single year, the Rams, where even when they have a setback after winning the super bowl, they're right back there. Is it going to be that kind of franchise? I think we have enough sample

size to project that that's going to be the case, but that's really the goal for the second half of this group. But now begins the Super Bowl window for the Vikings. And the fact that you even got to a Super Bowl window after three years of these guys, when most of the 2022 hires for head coaches have been fired at this point and Brian Dable might get fired if the Giants lose, you might end up with 10 hires in that off season and eight of them don't work out. And here we are with Kwesi Adafel Mensah and Kevin O'Connell talking about this team finally taking its step to compete for a Super Bowl. So I think that they are in as good of a spot as they have been since really 2017 and also from a drama perspective from a functionality perspective.

How do they operate on a daily basis as a team? How happy are the players, all those things? How much do we have going on that's in the news from a daily basis? And it really hasn't been much with this team. And most of the time, we've been able to just say, they'll probably figure these things out, and here they are,

and they have figured these things out. So Nick says, we're in a much healthier place than we were when he and KOC got here and they didn't tank to do it. They've earned extensions and opportunities to see through this window that they open. Yeah. I mean, I think that you use a really good word there as healthier place is exactly where they're at. I think that that is exactly the way that it should be described is from all perspectives, from the locker room, to the roster, to the salary cap situation, which will get a little harder in the future, but has been made healthy because of JJ McCarthy and they've been able to sign

big extensions and I think we also can't overlook that. Now I know it's one of the easiest decisions in the world to sign Justin Jefferson. He's insanely good at football so you just sign him to a contract extension but now when you look at the deal that they got done it looks pretty good and you look at the deal that they got done, it looks pretty good. And you look at the structure of it. It looks pretty good for the best wide receiver in the world. As every year wide receivers get more expensive and even better is the Christian Derrisaw deal.

Assuming he comes back to his old self after this injury. I mean that contract being signed a year before they needed to now, I know he got hurt, but I don't think that would have impacted the extension talks, how expensive would Christian Derrisaw have been if they were doing that right now? How about even some of the smaller things like signing Josh Mattel is early knowing that he was going to take on a bigger role. And over the last couple of years, Josh Mattel is has been one of the best bang for your buck players. How about Andrew van Ginkel? he was going to take on a bigger role. And over the last couple of years, Josh Mattel has, has been one of the

best bang for your buck players. How about Andrew van Ginkel? Now I know they just gave him an extension, but the contracts that van Ginkel and Granard and Cashman signed were all better contracts than how they performed or that their performance was more than what their contract would indicate and that's why you give van Ginkel an extension to make sure that or that their performance was more than what their contract would indicate. And that's why you give Van Ginkle an extension to make sure that he gets, uh, you know, uh, rewarded for that. And that's a good move. But the point being that they were able to identify some of these key players that they didn't pay as much as they would have been paid after a year here with the Minnesota Vikings. So I think you check a lot of boxes from a health perspective of the entire

franchise and that is really, really important. Uh, Keller Williams, realty, uh, I mean, you can, is it Tara Tara Keller Williams, realty, Tara Nolan. There you go. That's a, that's a way to get a the the free ad on the on the show so Tara Says I love this Always respect him for letting go of the players that had emotions attached to them cousins Thiel and Hunter Most of us can't make those hard decisions. Yeah Tara. I agree with that that it's not just that

Yeah, Tara, I agree with that, uh, that it's not just that those were players who were really good and to Neil Hunter, like think about how good to Neil Hunter was, but it's also that they looked into the future and said, what are these players going to bring us versus what they're worth? And even moving on from Kirk cousins was not an easy thing to do because you are entering the great unknown after that. And even though we think that the Vikings can make any quarterback look good now that Sam Darnold has won 14 games. I mean, you look at other franchises and the Pittsburgh Steelers are a great example of this other franchises that have been thought to be very good and Once that quarterback that they had for a long time the New England Patriots are a great example of this

Once they have that quarterback leave that was booing them up to the top At all times a Ben Roethlisberger Tom Brady and what Kirk Cousins did was he didn't buoy you up to the top He buoyed you up to the middle, but that's a place that's hard to move on from as we saw from Spielman and Zimmer, because what Kirk Cousins gave you was a guarantee that as you go down the stretch of a season, you're going to be in a playoff race. The key was that good to be in the running every single year. Now he wasn't going to win the race.

And we all knew that that a team quarterback by cousins was not going to go to a super bowl. But if you are in a leadership position and you can guarantee you can sort of start your season, knowing that you're at least going to be in that in the hunt graphic, you're going to be in the conversation. And if everything goes right, you're going to be in the playoffs and And if everything goes right, you're going to be in the playoffs and you're going to have a chance to win a playoff game.

That's a very hard thing to move on from and say, actually, we're going to make bets on quarterbacks that are unproven, including Sam Darnold and especially JJ McCarthy, and to take that risk and do that. I remember at some point, Casey Adolf, Fomenta had said that he's not going to do this job scared. And that may be the most important thing that he has done since he's got here. And that even goes for signings like this off season, and we're going to see how they play out.

Signings like Jonathan Allen signings, like J von Hargrave, there is risk involved. But what I think quasi a da Fomenta has not been afraid of is taking the risk. That has the bigger reward, the reward of sticking with Kirk cousins, even if cousins hadn't been as bad as he was last year with Atlanta, if they had stuck with him and gotten the same results from cousins and they win last year, 10, 11 games, something like that, losing the playoffs, pay them a bunch of money, don't sign the players that they were able to sign and just stay the course there, you're never taking a real shot at winning.

And that to me is the biggest endorsement of quasi at Alpha Mensa's general manager is I truly feel like he's gone into every off season with the plan to aim for a Super Bowl and not a plan to aim for just being good enough to keep his job. And an extension I think should even embolden him further, but I don't know if he needs to be like that's been his approach. And we could talk about, well, with this much draft capital, maybe this would have been better or this signing would have been better or, you know, one other thing.

But you know, I think that, uh, the general disposition of quasi at a FOMENSA to always go into an off season with the plan to how are you going to legitimately? compete for a super bowl That that to me is the best thing you can have as a general manager And if it doesn't work out at least you took a shot at it if jj mccarthy doesn't work out We're never going to go back and say oh man You should have stayed with kirk at 45 million dollars per year. I mean, that, that to me, you just cannot, you just can't justify that. I, even if it doesn't work out, we'll always go back and say that

quasi Adolfo Mence's decision to move on from Kirk and of course, Kevin O'Connell, the whole franchise to move on from Kirk onto JJ McCarthy and build it this way and take the shots at the free agents they did. This was the right way to go about it. And the process has been good. And I know that word gets used so often. It's so frustrating sometimes because even when teams have bad process, they'll be like, we have our process. Okay. Congratulations. But in this case, I mean, the process has made sense along the way. And it's always to me pointed the arrow at how do we win the Superbowl that they

go into every off season with their plans. That's what you're aiming for. Not how do we keep our jobs? Not how do we make this good enough? So the ownership feels like we're competitive. And if it doesn't work out and they get fired, at least you can go home saying, well, you tried to win the Superbowl rather than just trying to hang around in the league.

And when you have a leadership also that seems to work together in conjunction the way that it does with Kwesi and Afo-Mensa and Kevin O'Connell, where the needs that O'Connell lays out, including the interior of the offensive line, they end up getting resolved by the front office. That's another important thing too, is during, and it's impossible not to compare during the Zimmer and Spielman era, it felt like they were often just on, on two different wavelengths. The things that Mike Zimmer wanted and the things that the front office was

doing, that even down to some of the stories about And I think maybe Zimmer even said this one that he walked out of the draft room after they took some guys in 20 what was it? 2021 draft I think How is that possible? I mean and look the draft videos that the team puts together Of course are the best moments inside the draft room, but it does not seem like there's a situation where you're going to have the Vikings picking a player with the general manager that makes the head coach

walk out of the room. Right. And, and that those two being on the same page and that word collaboration, again, it's a corporate word. It's not something that we knew what to do with when they first started throwing it out there. But now I think we've seen it really work out. And when Kevin O'Connell kind of had a, a bad moment at the podium for him,

a good moment for us seeing a window into what he was thinking. But when he came to the podium and Glendale and said, we need a better interior offensive line. Well, imagine if they were walking into this season with the same sort of problems, but instead they've worked in conjunction and fix them. That makes you think, I love that word healthy. It just makes you think healthy, everything with this healthy and ready to go compete in the NFC North with some really, really good teams.

That's that's now the goal, but at least you're there. At least you have gotten to a point where we feel like there's a chance for you to be able to legitimately compete. Uh, Matt says they've been super smart about resigning guys early. I'm sure that, uh, the environment they've created helps with that. Right. I mean, it all plays off of each other. It all plays off of helps with that. Right. I mean, it all plays off of each other. It all plays off of each other.

That. Yes. I mean, if you can create an environment and a lot of that is investment from the Wilfs that have brought them this great facility, but if you can have a head coach who knows how to communicate with people and knows how to connect with players and empower his players. I think that that's really important for Kevin O'Connell. It gets out.

People find out when they hear that Vikings players are happy. And again, that anonymous survey, there's players around the league who rip their teams in that anonymous survey who do not grade their coach well, who do not grade their facilities well. And the Vikings do so well in that, that everybody finds out. Everybody talks around the league and they know what it's like to be here, which I think does help uh, Quasi Adolfo-Mensa and the front office do their jobs because when they make the phone call, people are happy to take it rather than groaning or saying, I'm only going to take the top dollar to stay and be a

Minnesota Viking. So it all plays off of each other. And that's how it's supposed to. Sometimes it feels like there's been analysis of this team that has tried to, well, he did this and he did that. Like they're all supposed to do it together to win and, uh, playing off of how good your coach is to sign players seems like a pretty good idea. Uh, Tristan says any details on what he got?

Uh, no, I don't have any details on it. I just, I would assume, and this is very much an assumption, not a report. Okay. That the Wilfs always have wanted the head coach and GM to be tied together at the hip. So my thought would be that it's the same length. I don't know that it's just how they've always done it in the past. That's the best I can do there. Uh, Tristan says, uh, quasi is a free agency magician.

Look at what he did last year and did even better this year. It seems impossible, but he pulls it off. That's the biggest reason is pretty much every player in the NFL wants to play for us. Right. Yeah. And that's what I mean that, okay, so you've got this opportunity to have the free agents that you want to get if you're the Vikings, but also that doesn't mean you can't, you can't make mistakes, right? Like you're going out and spending that money and investing in those players. So who are you going to get and how are you going to invest in? And I do think that this off season did come along with a lot of risk.

And there are some dice rolls here with older players, but this is also a little bit of the hack that you want your general manager to find, which is that a lot of these older players were signed for less money than they would have been a J von Hargrave. We know what he got with the San Francisco 49ers getting him for was it 14, $15 million a year is $10 million less than he's worth. Had he been healthy the previous season that comes along with risk. But that's what you hire quasi a Daffo MENSA for is to understand the risk versus the potential reward versus the price that you're having to pay for it.

And the penalty, if it goes wrong, all those things, and they've done a very good job at that. I mean, even someone like van Ginkle was coming off of an injury and then played a thousand snaps. And that's where it all has to work together. Like their training staff, it has to work together to make this all go. And for them to be hitting on these players that maybe had some risk that caused other teams to back off. So my main point in them signing quasi-dafile Mensa to this extension, uh, cause I'll kind of put a bow on it here.

Just my final thoughts is, well, one, it should have been pretty obvious, right? That they would want this leadership to go forward. And there was a little bit of eyebrow raising. Why is this taking so long? And there has been at times around the NFL, I think some people who wanted to see quasi-dolphin Mensa fail and NFL, I think some people who wanted to see Quasi-Adamfo Mensa fail and maybe even locally, some people who wanted to see Quasi-Adamfo Mensa fail. And so there's always been over his first couple years, some whispers of like,

what does he really do there? Or are they? And these are things that people have just asked me around the league. Like, is it really KOC's team? Is it, is that why he's not signed to this extension? And really the truth is exactly what we thought it was that the Vikings have. A leadership pair here together. And now with Demetrius Washington, Ryan Grigsyn, Rob Brzezinski, like they have a core and Brian Flores, a core of leaders who

have made good decisions to put this team in a chance to go seriously fight for an NFC North title for a Superbowl. I don't know if that's going to happen, but we've seen the bad side of this. We've seen the dysfunctional side of this. We've seen the panic side of this. That is not what we have here. We have a strategy that they have deployed that has worked in San Francisco and Philadelphia.

It's worked with the rookie quarterback contract and spending around it. And even if you look at teams that win the Superbowl, they're often veteran teams. So there's a little concern about that in the longterm. And there's, you know, if it goes well, then they're going to have to probably deal with at some point down the road, two to three years down the road, the fact of the, some of these salary cap hits coming to get them. And eventually what they're aiming for is signing McCarthy and all those sorts of things, if it works out, you'll have those problems because players will play really well and need more

money and McCarthy will need a big contract and all those things. But for the next two years, I think when you hire someone, can you reach a point where you're saying, look, they have a chance right now to go really fight for this thing. And they're going to have a window to do it go really fight for this thing and they're going to have a window to do it in. When you hire someone, if you have reached that point, that's where you give the extension. That's where you consider it successful for now.

They do not get crowned for the first three years because they didn't win playoff games and that has to happen. So that's the other part of this. We all know what the next phase has to happen. So that's the other part of this. We all know what the next phase has to be. If they're not playing in late January, then this didn't work out. Even if we like the process, it is a results-based business. The excuses or the free passes that we've given a little bit before on, hey, you overachieved.

Hey, you reached a point where it was better than we thought it was going to be based on that. That's no more. So this really does change the way we evaluate quasi-daful Mensa and Kevin O'Connell really does change going forward because a season like last year, 14 wins is phenomenal. But if you do that again and you have double digit wins and you go and get blasted in another first round,

it's not gonna be the same. And the reaction of course was extreme disappointment and everything else from the fans. But I think that anyone rational would have said that team really wasn't supposed to be there at that point. Well, now they're supposed to be there. And now we don't have that hair. Well, you know, they're still recovering from Kurt.

Remember Kirk was still on the books last year. They had 80 million in dead cap. Well, now they don't have those things. They don't have those excuses slash explanations. Now these moves have to work and they have to go win and the draft picks have to hit because it's time. And that's very exciting for Minnesota Vikings fans, I think to be at that point. And sometimes I think about that with the timber wolves where, you know,

rightfully, I see a lot of, uh, Minnesota fans super upset at what happened with the timber wolves and thinking that they could have gone to a championship and so forth and I'm, I'm with you on that. And it was disappointing the results, but also every year you go into a season. If you're a Timberwolves fan, you're thinking, well, how are they really going to compete for a championship? We have reached that point with the Minnesota Vikings as well. And whether it goes there or not, we're going to find out.

And that'll be really fun to follow for all of us for Vikings fans who've been waiting for this for a long time. It will be very fun for me to talk about on a nightly basis with you guys. I feel the energy of the fan base when we have these conversations and you guys want to know who tight end three is and what Dallas Turner is going to be and all those sorts of things. It is quite a time to be cheering for this team because the bar has now been raised. Well, quasi Adapha Menta has been here and that is I think the bottom line that

when you can reach a point where in June Vikings fans want to show up to a live stream and talk about the things they're excited about for this upcoming season. And the standard that's been set is now getting to the playoffs, winning the playoffs, all that sort of stuff. That's not the case for 32 fan bases. That's for sure. And that to me says you are deserving of an extension and that the next phase is what will really decide how quasi at our Fomento is remembered as

the Minnesota Vikings general manager. It is the next phase as many great moments have happened over these first three years, this is now truly. Quasi a da Fomenta and Kevin O'Connell's team and off we go into the future. So there you have it. An emergency podcast, breaking down quasi a da Fomenta's extension. And nobody is more thrilled than me that we don't have to talk about it every live stream because I Didn't know what to say on this one is like it'll probably happen

It'll probably happen It'll probably happen and here we are it happened. So your franchise Vikings fans has a Leadership group that's gonna give you a chance And that's the best you can ask for. And now we'll see what happens next. JJ McCarthy is going to throw footballs in front of the media again next week at OTAs. I'll be there. I've also got a fun conversation coming a little later

with ESPN's Mike Clay that you want to look out for. And if you didn't see it, the reaction from the first OTA practice from JJ McCarthy, make sure you go and check that out. So hopefully we kind of covered all the bases there. And then now we go forward and I think they've done everything like it. Now there's what trade for Jalen Ramsey. Hey, crazy trade for Jalen Ramsey. That's how we'll end the show.

All right. Thanks, everybody. I appreciate everybody jumping on on a Friday morning here and we'll talk to you all soon. Football.