The Vikings Should Salvage the Best Parts Of Kwesi's Draft Strategy

The Minnesota Vikings fired former general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah largely due to his unproductive draft classes. Over four years at the helm, his drafts produced one All-Pro kicker, zero Pro Bowlers, and just four starters from 28 total selections. Based on those nauseating numbers, it would make perfect sense for the Vikings to throw this longship into reverse and do pretty much the exact opposite. But Adofo-Mensah may actually have been on the right track all along.

When it comes to producing NFL talent, five programs stand above the rest. Ohio State, Michigan, Alabama, Georgia, and LSU are the only schools with at least 50 active NFL players. Of Adofo-Mensah’s 28 draft picks over the years, nine of them, or 32%, hail from just these five schools.

By coincidence or not, his best picks also mostly happen to come from this group. Dallas Turner and Will Reichard are Alabama alumni. The Vikings drafted Donovan Jackson out of Ohio State. Even current Houston Texas starter and 2022 Vikings’ pick Ed Ingram fits the mold, coming from LSU. The only outlier would be Jordan Addison, who comes to us from USC, although the Trojans aren’t far behind with 38 active NFL players.

That’s not to say that just drafting every player from these couple of schools guarantees instant success. After all, infamous Kwesi draft pick Lewis Cine played at Georgia. But, despite the former GM’s problems finding talent in the draft, he knew that he had a better than decent chance to hit on players coming from NFL factories.

So, as Kevin O’Connell and Rob Brzezinski turn their attention to the NFL combine, they might benefit from not abandoning Adofo-Mensah’s approach completely. Instead, they could pick up the pieces, dust off the salvageable bits, and improve upon his strategy.

The combine starts in just a few days, and while it still has some merit, Minnesota may have relied on it too heavily in the past. Each player will receive a Relative Athletic Score (RAS), a metric that grades an NFL prospect's performance relative to their peers. Taking into account things like size, speed, and agility, it’s supposed to help identify players with a high ceiling due to their top-end athleticism.

It’s just one metric, but one that Adofo-Mensah seemingly favored, having drafted several players who scored very highly. For example, Cine scored a 9.92 RAS out of a possible 10. At the time, it ranked eighth out of 868 free safeties from 1987 to 2022. Coupled with the fact that he had just finished a productive season with the National Champion Georgia Bulldogs, it was hard to fault Adofo-Mensah for the pick.

Minnesota has promised to lean more into traditional scouting methods this time around; however, those metrics may not carry as much weight. That’s probably for the best, as much as Pro Football Focus, RAS attempts to boil a player’s attributes down to a single score. While it’s useful, those scores – and 10-yard splits – were the beginnings of Adofo-Mensah’s downfall.

Looking at this year’s draft, the Vikings have been repeatedly linked to three or four prospects, including cornerback Avieon Terrell. Due to his average size of 5’11” and 180 lbs., his RAS likely won’t be at the top end of corners. That won’t be the end of the world for Minnesota in 2026. He comes from Clemson, which ranks 13th in current NFL players and has produced some nice cornerbacks over the last few years in Nate Wiggins and Avieon’s brother, A.J. Terrell.

So would he have been an Adofo-Mensah pick? It’s impossible to know, but likely not. Of the former Vikings GM’s five first-round picks, only one did not come from one of the top-five NFL factory schools. Terrell’s projected good-not-great RAS score doesn’t fit the mold either.

There may be fans jumping for joy to hear the Vikings honing in on a player whom Adofo-Mensah likely would’ve passed on. However, until O’Connell can prove he can do it better, there are still questions to consider.

Ultimately, the Vikings will be best served by taking some analytical and odds-based ideas from Adofo-Mensah and topping them with a nice helping of decades of football knowledge. Because, of course, every single player from Georgia won’t pan out, and it takes more than an elite showing in the Underwear Olympics to know if they will. Still, for the Vikings to completely abandon analytics would be foolish, and they know that.

Minnesota’s first few picks in the 2026 draft should give a clear indication of how much of the former general manager’s influence has been kept alive. Maybe the picks will look eerily familiar to those of the past few years, or maybe the Vikings will instead flip the script and opt for the slow, short guy from the California University of Pennsylvania State Community College.