Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s brilliance continues to shine with latest quarterback news proving it once again

The Minnesota Vikings have a brilliant forward thinking general manager in Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. He led the Vikings to a 34-17 record while they were rebuilding over the first three seasons of his tenure.

Throughout the entirety of the competitive rebuild, the Vikings were aggressive in trying to fix the roster, but they used a lot of creativity in doing so. One of those elements came last season after the New York Giants decided to move on from their starting quarterback in November.

Minnesota Vikings could get huge benefit with Daniel Jones being named Colts starting QB

On Tuesday morning, the Indianapolis Colts chose to name Daniel Jones their starting quarterback. It was a big decision, as Anthony Richardson was just drafted fourth overall in the 2023 NFL Draft. Things aren’t looking good for him, but let’s make Jones our focus for a minute.

The Vikings tried to bring Jones back into the fold for the 2025 season as the backup to J.J. McCarthy, but he chose to sign a one-year deal worth $14 million with the Colts for one main reason: A better chance to be the starter.

Losing out on Jones is projected to land the Vikings a compensatory pick in the fifth round. With Jones being named the starting quarterback, that could elevate into a fourth-round pick by playing more snaps. That compensatory pick would have cost the Vikings a paltry $127,000 by having Jones on the practice squad to finish the regular season, and they elevated him just before the playoff game against the Los Angeles Rams.

After the first wave of free agency, head coach Kevin O’Connell talked about the compensatory formula and how Adofo-Mensah’s been brilliant with it.

“It’s probably one of the number one things I’ve had to learn about, which, if you know anything about the layers to it, just make sure you got some Tylenol or Advil or something, because it’s time consuming. And then right when you feel like you’ve learned it, then they throw in this play time thing, and they throw in this and it could change, and it’s this range, but when you look at it like we’re inside of a month away from the draft, and I know how people will treat third and fourth round picks, especially in their mock drafts over their back the idea of creating one of those things from Sam Darnold, or Daniel Jones, or Cam Robinson, as players that you’re not going to have back, but you poured into it.

“Really is something you have to take a mindset with to try to maximize, and we’ve tried to do that. And that’s where I think Kwesi (Adofo-Mensah), he deserves so much credit for his staff and him working with us as coaches to really identify ways of kind of doing the things that we felt were mandates to improve our team throughout the off season, but doing it in a way where we can still be plus two or potentially three even high level comp picks. So great question.”

Jones being named the starting quarterback right now doesn’t mean he is going to stay the starter. He needs to be the starter long enough to play around 25% of the snaps. That will likely vault the Vikings to getting that fourth-round pick. If that happens, it’ll be another coup for Adofo-Mensah.