Why the Vikings Were Right to Fire Their GM — And Why the Decision Was Inevitable

The Minnesota Vikings didn’t fire their general manager because of impatience. They didn’t do it because of panic, or ownership meddling, or a sudden philosophical shift. They did it because the most important decision in football — quarterback evaluation — went disastrously wrong, and the consequences were impossible to ignore.

Strip away the press releases and polite language and this comes down to one brutal comparison.

One season, the Vikings went 14–3, powered by a quarterback who threw for 4,319 yards, 35 touchdowns, and 12 interceptions. The offense was explosive, confident, and built to win immediately.

The next season, that same franchise stumbled to 9–8, with the quarterback position producing 1,632 yards, 11 touchdowns, and 12 interceptions.

That’s not a marginal downgrade. That’s a collapse.

And it’s why the Vikings were absolutely right to move on from their GM.

Quarterback decisions are different from every other evaluation in sports. Miss on a guard? You can hide it. Miss on a corner? You can scheme around it. Miss on a quarterback — especially when you already had a proven, productive one in the building — and everything else becomes irrelevant.

Kwesi Adofo-Mensah didn’t just miss on a draft pick. He chose to move off a quarterback who had already shown he could pilot a contender, in favor of theoretical upside and long-term modeling. That’s the kind of decision that looks brilliant in a spreadsheet and catastrophic on Sundays.

The Vikings were not a rebuilding team. They had a proven head coach, elite weapons, and a locker room ready to win. Choosing development over continuity wasn’t just risky — it directly contradicted the state of the roster. You can’t sell “win now” to veterans and “trust the process” at quarterback at the same time.

What made the move unforgivable wasn’t that the replacement struggled — young quarterbacks struggle all the time. It was that the downgrade was obvious almost immediately. The offense stalled. Drives died early. Close games flipped the wrong way. And the margin between contender and pretender vanished.

Ownership didn’t need advanced metrics to understand what happened. They watched a team go from a top-tier offense to one that couldn’t consistently function. They saw five wins disappear with no meaningful improvement elsewhere to justify the sacrifice.

This is where the analytics-first approach finally hits its ceiling.

Analytics are a tool, not a replacement for football judgment. They can help identify inefficiencies, manage contracts, and optimize roster value. But quarterback evaluation still demands instincts, context, and an understanding of human variables that no model fully captures.

Darnold wasn’t perfect. No one is claiming he was Mahomes or Allen. But he was good enough to win big with this roster — and he proved it. Betting against that production required overwhelming confidence in the alternative. That confidence was misplaced.

The extension signed less than a year earlier only accelerated the fallout. Once ownership publicly committed to Kwesi, every major decision carried more weight. When the biggest one backfired, there was no way to spin it as a normal growing pain. It became a referendum on his ability to lead the franchise.

Firing a GM is never just about one move. But sometimes one move tells you everything you need to know.

The Vikings didn’t lose faith because they missed the playoffs. They lost faith because the path backward was entirely self-inflicted. The organization didn’t get unlucky. It got outsmarted by its own arrogance.

In a league where quarterback stability is king, Minnesota chose uncertainty when certainty was already working. That’s not bold vision — that’s poor evaluation.

And when a general manager shows they can’t be trusted with the most important decision in the sport, the rest doesn’t matter.

The Vikings didn’t overreact.

They course-corrected.