The biggest personnel decisions facing the new GM

Kwesi Adofo-Mensah has some tricky personnel decisions coming up in the near future

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By Sam Ekstrom

New Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah won’t have much time to get his new office organized before he’s asked to make some franchise-altering decisions.

After adding input on the team’s next head coach, a huge decision in its own right, Adofo-Mensah will step into the inferno that is the Vikings salary cap situation. Kirk Cousins’ minefield of a contract skyrockets to the top of Adofo-Mensah’s priority list, but the new GM also has a half dozen other contracts to contemplate as he looks to put his stamp on the Vikings roster.

Let’s dig into his biggest upcoming decisions:

1. Kirk Cousins

It all starts with the quarterback and trickles down from there.

Consider the options facing Adofo-Mensah. On one hand, he can double down on an expensive quarterback with a low local approval rating and only one playoff win in his career. To do so, he’d likely have to commit more guaranteed money to Cousins and extend the life of his contract while still having to pinch pennies in 2022. The last time the Vikings restructured Cousins’ contract they lowered his cap hit by 32 percent. Doing that for his current $45 million number would save $14.4 million, enough to get the Vikings close to cap compliancy but not enough to sign all the free agents needed to field a competent roster.

Door No. 2 is using his first weeks on the job to pursue a Cousins trade that allows Adofo-Mensah to enter free agency and the draft knowing what cards he’s holding. If he knows Cousins’ money is cleared from the books, he’ll have fewer veterans with whom to haggle over contracts in March (we’ll get into those shortly) and more money to spend on building out a roster. If he has extra Day 1 or Day 2 picks from the deal, he’ll have the assets to start finding future pieces that his coaching staff wants in the building.

The reality is that keeping Cousins around ties Adofo-Mensah’s hands from a roster-building standpoint, even if Cousins offers a higher baseline of performance than a mystery rookie or bridge quarterback. Investing in Cousins would have massive ramifications elsewhere on the roster, which is an awfully binding decision for a new GM to make.

If Cousins sticks around, even at a reduced cap number, Adofo-Mensah will have pressure to audit the contracts of numerous key veterans.

2. Danielle Hunter

For a second straight offseason, the Vikings could be looking at a contract standoff with Danielle Hunter.

The Vikings star defensive end is set to make an untenable $26.12 million against the cap, a number higher than Myles Garrett’s league-leading $25 million per year at the edge rusher position.

While Minnesota could lower Hunter’s cap hit through an extension, he would still shape up as the team’s second-most expensive asset behind Cousins. That’s a risky proposition for a player that’s only played seven games in two seasons, but then again, you’ve gotta pay for pass rush, and Hunter proved to be one of the league’s best through seven games in 2021. Extrapolate his pressures over a full season, and he would’ve finished tied for fourth in the NFL.

That’s the type of production that will pique the interest of the new GM. Adofo-Mensah’s run in San Francisco saw the 49ers invest at a league-high rate in defensive ends, and their pass rush has been no small factor as to why they’ve two deep playoff runs with Jimmy Garoppolo as their quarterback.

Hunter is one of the few defensive veterans on the Vikings roster still in his physical prime. His age and production suggest he’s worth building around; his price, though, will be steep. That counts for trade value, too, so if Adofo-Mensah is interested in pick hoarding, he could likely get a haul for Hunter, who has an $18 million roster bonus kick in on March 20.