All Things 2026 Minnesota Vikings Off-Season Thread

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Paul Allen never said anything about a schism. KOC said he found his franchise qb in JJM. The whole thing was a ponzi scheme on the fans.
 


RememberMurray said:
Yes. It was money. We'll spend on a wide receiver, but we hate spending on a QB. It's hard to even contemplate the foolishness of that approach. "They couldn't afford" him? Apparently they couldn't afford to let him go!



JJM was not ready to lead a team that had realistic playoff aspirations. Full stop.

Conversely, Darnold is the QB of a Super Bowl team. So it is possible to pay Sam Darnold and at the same time field a really good team. This applies to much of what follows...



Woulda, coulda, shoulda never applies in professional sports. All that matters is actual results.
Click to expand...
you're arguing different things.

Darnold could go to a super bowl. he's shown that. he's also shown it takes the right team around him to do so. they clearly seemed to think they could not assemble that roster (biased in no small part to the shambolic effort against the Rams preceded by a drubbing by the Lions). I can get that feeling based on where they'd already dumped money

If their feeling, which no one has said outwardly in any way, shape, or form that I have seen or heard that there is no way you can get to or win a super bowl with sam darnold, then they are most certainly wrong which would be completely boneheaded feeling if you look at historic super bowl QBs (both winners and runners up).

I agree with you that being forever in QB purgatory sucks when you're throwing out almost good enough rosters. They took a shot on JJ and will continue to do that into next year in hopes he becomes the franchise guy. I don't really see any way that's flawed thinking/logic unless he cannot think the game (that is on KOC to say flatly he cannot do this) or KOC cannot call a game to a young QB (which seemed pretty painfully apparent this year, especially early). He has the arm strength and the mobility to play at this level. I do really have issue with how KOC called the offense with him under center (or in the gun).

Personally I really love what Kubiak did in Seattle this year. They're one of the heaviest run skew teams in the league with a run over expected rate of about 5% to the run. They run PA and motion constantly to give Darnold easy reads. Its pretty fascinating to look at the data and see Darnold is about as middle of the pack as it comes in terms of every advanced QB stat out there (and it's really fascinating to look at it compared to Geno Smith the year prior) as well as their efficiencies.

Short add to the end. I agree with you 100% this QB purgatory we're in sucks and needs to change if this team is ever going to get over the hump. They thought they may have that guy in Mccarthy and I guess we'll see next year as year 2 needs to be better. That said, the bed we have been in is on KAM for missing repeatedly in the draft and needing to spend in FA. If KAM hits on literally anything from 2022 or 2023 outside Addison, you have the money to keep Darnold. Then go look at Seattle since that time. There's a reason you could plug Darnold (amongst many others) into that spot and have a Super Bowl contender.
 






Ben Goessling was on with Dan on Fri and specifically addressed why he and actual legitimate reporters like Seifert, Shefter, etc. aren't reporting things like above.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure ........ Dan Rotman? Who TF is that? .... is a stand up guy.


That is gossip. That is not news.

Legitimate, credible reports cannot and should report gossip. Carry on
 

Dan was also painstakingly trying emphasize the point that the Vikings inevitably swing like a pendulum back and forth on "style" of head coaches, and now wondering if the same will be true for GM.

We had a "football guy" in Rick Spielman. Then we went with a Wall Street analytics "outside the box" guy and just fired him.

Will we go back to a "football guy" now?


Also will we see the resumption of the "triangle of authority" with KOC, Rob Brzezinski, and whomever the new GM is?
 



KAM had a great 2024 FA class. The 2025 class was bad.

The drafts cost him his job, plain and simple.

Wilfs said as much
 

Still amazing to me though:

- you just cover the GD kickoff against the Bears, they don't win the game
- yes I agree, then Green Bay tries to put up a much tougher fight in Week 18 ... but it's at home and our defense is playing at a level that's top of the league, we win that game
- we get the #7 seed and go to Chicago instead of GB
- we beat Chicago in the playoff game


Now it's the Vikings that have won their first playoff game in X years, not the Bears.


Incredible how much that one incredible blown kickoff coverage affected.
 

So that covers the 2025 "bad" season (we still won more games than we lost).

The 2023 bad season was because Cousins had started playing at an MVP level, then blows out his Achilles. That's the entire reason why.


Two very, very bad luck years.
 

If we don't make the playoffs again in 2026, I'd be fine with firing KOC and promoting Flores to head coach.
 




Ogie Ogilthorpe said:
This just continues to unveil more and more of a shitshow with each passing day.

Alec Lewis at The Athletic with quite the deep dive on the KAM firing and the events leading up to it.

Inside The Stunning Dismissal of KAM
Click to expand...
So he had no idea what he was doing outside of analytics and Wall Street projections, Which has been pretty apparent since they hired him. The timing is really weird but yeah I wouldn’t want him around the draft as it doesn’t seem to be that he adds anything personally other than he could be like me playing madden. Pretty solid article from Lewis without injecting any personal bias/opinion

It is still lol to me bringing up Rodgers who pretty clearly doesn’t have the zip nor mobility that made him a legend and thinking we could play him behind this ol and it would’ve made the difference

As an aside, nfl culture is so fucked up (re the paternity leave stuff)
 

Mackey and Judd mentioned paternity leave for both KAM and McCarthy.

It sounded as though it really annoyed O'Connell that McCarthy missed one particular practice... it was a Thursday practice in a short week after the Monday Night game vs the Bears, and apparently the practice on that following Wednesday had been just a walkthrough, not a "real" practice, and therefore the Thursday practice McCarthy missed would have been crucial preparation. McCarthy was awful in the game that Sunday vs the Falcons, and he got hurt. Mackey and Judd seemed to think that O'Connell has even hinted (on multiple occasions) that if McCarthy had been better prepared for that game things might have been different.

As for Kwesi's leave, it came during training camp, final cutdown, etc.

If what they're saying is accurate, it looks pretty bad.

 

Appears the entirety of the tc media just simply goes along with whatever message the vikes want out there. Such a dichotomy to how tc media treats the gophs. Explains a lot.
 

Dan on Sermons this morning referenced a piece that Seifert did, which I image is similar to the Lewis piece referenced above. On it's free, here it is:
www.espn.com

What led the Vikings to fire GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah?

Minnesota took a big swing by making the inexperienced Adofo-Mensah its GM -- and missed.
www.espn.com www.espn.com

Here are some import excerpts, in my opinion:

Adofo-Mensah had been one of the least experienced general manager hires in recent NFL history, having never played or coached football before taking an entry-level analytics job with the 49ers in 2013. And now, two years in, he was acknowledging that the concerns about his inexperience -- that he wasn't equipped to lead a front office, that his analytics background left him short on actual football instincts and that he was still learning the difference between theory and reality -- had come true.

...

There had been public indications of Adofo-Mensah's inexperience throughout his tenure, despite the NFL's fifth-best regular-season winning percentage during that time (.632). They included a disastrous first draft in 2022 and the ill-fated series of quarterback decisions that led Sam Darnold to depart last spring (he has since led the Seattle Seahawks to the Super Bowl) and J.J. McCarthy to assume the starting role before he was ready.

All told, the Vikings have gotten less production out of Adofo-Mensah's four drafts (172 starts) than all but one NFL team. For perspective, the average NFL team has received 368 starts from players drafted over that period.

...

Team and league sources thought that Adofo-Mensah's answer about leadership in 2024 came after the Wilfs spoke to him about being more accessible to the people who worked for him. The Wilfs believed he spent more time in his office, working through statistical models and long-range planning, and not enough time circulating among staffers.

Internally, Adofo-Mensah also shouldered much of the blame this past season for failing to pair McCarthy with a veteran quarterback who could hedge against injury or ineffectiveness. Instead, McCarthy produced one of the NFL's worst six-game starts to a career in the past decade, an outcome the Vikings could do little about after Adofo-Mensah failed to finalize negotiations with free agent Daniel Jones and instead traded for veteran Sam Howell to back up McCarthy. The Vikings replaced Howell with Carson Wentz shortly before the season began, at coach Kevin O'Connell's urging.

...

Ultimately, though, Adofo-Mensah's approach contributed to a level of detachment from the Vikings' otherwise traditional coaching staff. Honest sometimes to a fault, Adofo-Mensah once credited O'Connell with teaching him the importance of a tight end in an NFL offense prior to acquiring T.J. Hockenson in a trade with the Detroit Lions.

As it would in many organizations, the level of Adofo-Mensah's inexperience drew concern. Multiple sources said that defensive coordinator Brian Flores' unusual decision to let his contract lapse, before signing a new deal that will pay him more than $6 million per season, was based in part on his unease with the direction of the front office. When asked last month if he wanted to remain with the Vikings, Flores noted that he loved working for the Wilfs and with O'Connell, and loved living in Minnesota, but did not mention Adofo-Mensah.
 

After reading that, and reading in between the lines on that last paragraph ....... to me it's obvious what happened and it explains the timing:

one way or another, KAM had to be let go before Flores would come back.


May not have been a hard and fast explicit demand, may have been a more "we'll look into getting things better" and then they just went for it.
 

Ogie Ogilthorpe said:
This just continues to unveil more and more of a shitshow with each passing day.

Alec Lewis at The Athletic with quite the deep dive on the KAM firing and the events leading up to it.

Inside The Stunning Dismissal of KAM
Click to expand...

The Wilfs are even bigger clowns than I thought previously, which is saying something.

Dysfunction is their function.
 


Ope3 said:
Good one Zygi and Mark.
Click to expand...
Hiring KAM turned out to be a blunder. Maybe one of the worst GM hirings in some time.


I can only assume it was to break the Spielman/Zimmer mold and culture.
 

GopherGrit said:
Dan on Sermons this morning referenced a piece that Seifert did, which I image is similar to the Lewis piece referenced above. On it's free, here it is:
www.espn.com

What led the Vikings to fire GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah?

Minnesota took a big swing by making the inexperienced Adofo-Mensah its GM -- and missed.
www.espn.com www.espn.com

Here are some import excerpts, in my opinion:

Adofo-Mensah had been one of the least experienced general manager hires in recent NFL history, having never played or coached football before taking an entry-level analytics job with the 49ers in 2013. And now, two years in, he was acknowledging that the concerns about his inexperience -- that he wasn't equipped to lead a front office, that his analytics background left him short on actual football instincts and that he was still learning the difference between theory and reality -- had come true.

...

There had been public indications of Adofo-Mensah's inexperience throughout his tenure, despite the NFL's fifth-best regular-season winning percentage during that time (.632). They included a disastrous first draft in 2022 and the ill-fated series of quarterback decisions that led Sam Darnold to depart last spring (he has since led the Seattle Seahawks to the Super Bowl) and J.J. McCarthy to assume the starting role before he was ready.

All told, the Vikings have gotten less production out of Adofo-Mensah's four drafts (172 starts) than all but one NFL team. For perspective, the average NFL team has received 368 starts from players drafted over that period.

...

Team and league sources thought that Adofo-Mensah's answer about leadership in 2024 came after the Wilfs spoke to him about being more accessible to the people who worked for him. The Wilfs believed he spent more time in his office, working through statistical models and long-range planning, and not enough time circulating among staffers.

Internally, Adofo-Mensah also shouldered much of the blame this past season for failing to pair McCarthy with a veteran quarterback who could hedge against injury or ineffectiveness. Instead, McCarthy produced one of the NFL's worst six-game starts to a career in the past decade, an outcome the Vikings could do little about after Adofo-Mensah failed to finalize negotiations with free agent Daniel Jones and instead traded for veteran Sam Howell to back up McCarthy. The Vikings replaced Howell with Carson Wentz shortly before the season began, at coach Kevin O'Connell's urging.

...

Ultimately, though, Adofo-Mensah's approach contributed to a level of detachment from the Vikings' otherwise traditional coaching staff. Honest sometimes to a fault, Adofo-Mensah once credited O'Connell with teaching him the importance of a tight end in an NFL offense prior to acquiring T.J. Hockenson in a trade with the Detroit Lions.

As it would in many organizations, the level of Adofo-Mensah's inexperience drew concern. Multiple sources said that defensive coordinator Brian Flores' unusual decision to let his contract lapse, before signing a new deal that will pay him more than $6 million per season, was based in part on his unease with the direction of the front office. When asked last month if he wanted to remain with the Vikings, Flores noted that he loved working for the Wilfs and with O'Connell, and loved living in Minnesota, but did not mention Adofo-Mensah.
Click to expand...

Good one Zygi and Mark.
 





Ope3 said:
Any trophies awarded for player grades? Playoff victories?

Good for you if you find solace in these "player grades". I find zilch.
Click to expand...
Horrible, awful owners win playoff games all the time.

So what?
 



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