Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah gave the Jets the blueprint on how to rebuild, and they made a big mistake ignoring it
The competitive rebuild was staring the Jets in the face, and they chose the route of many failures.
The NFL trade deadline has come and gone with a surprising amount of moves, with six trades across the league.
Of those trades, the New York Jets and Dallas Cowboys each made two, including one with each other, but it was the former who made the biggest splashes. New general manager Darren Mougey decided to tear it down to the studs. On Tuesday, they traded cornerback Sauce Gardner to the Indianapolis Colts and defensive tackle Quinnen Williams to the Cowboys. In return, the Jets landed:
- 2026 first-round pick (Colts)
- 2026 second-round pick (Cowboys)
- 2027 first-round pick (Colts)
- 2027 first-round pick (higher of Cowboys and Green Bay Packers)
- WR Adonai Mitchell
- NT Mazi Smith
It’s quite the shakeup for the Jets, who spent 2023 and 2024 loading up to make a run with Aaron Rodgers. This year, they won their first game after losing the first seven, but the process they used wasn’t a smart one.
New York Jets didn’t learn anything from Minnesota Vikings’ competitive rebuild
Mougey chose to tear things down to the studs. It’s been a popular draft strategy for many teams across the board. The reality is simple: most teardown rebuilds don’t work.
Right now, the Chicago Bears are in the midst of coming out of it, and they still have a lot of questions surrounding them. They have a ton of draft picks to bring in young, talented players, but they now have a bare bones roster.
With the draft capital they have brought back through their trades, the hope is that the Jets can find players like Gardner and Williams to add to their team. That’s the biggest reason why teams have not dug themselves out of their holes.
The Bears might be 5-3, but they are loaded with questions and inconsistencies. The Miami Dolphins traded away Laremy Tunsil and Minkah Fitzpatrick to spark their rebuild, and it resulted in a total of zero playoff wins. The Detroit Lions didn’t do a full teardown, as their only major move was trading Matthew Stafford, but they got two first-round picks and their own franchise quarterback, Jared Goff, in return.
We’ve seen other teams attempt a full teardown with little success; for instance, the 2017 Cleveland Browns and the 2019 Las Vegas Raiders had five draft picks over two years. The one thing that trading away stars gives you is lottery tickets for acquiring other stars, but you have to hit on them.
One of the reasons the Lions have achieved their success is due to their excellent drafting. It’s incredibly hard to do that over the course of multiple years, and it’s why teams have not done it.
It’s also surprising that teams haven’t tried to take the Minnesota Vikings’ approach. When general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah took the Vikings job ahead of the 2022 season, he got it in part because Ryan Poles reportedly wanted to strip the Vikings down to the studs, and ownership didn’t want to do that.
People laughed at the idea of the competitive rebuild, but it worked. Adofo-Mensah’s teams are a combined 34-17 under his leadership, with 13 and 14-win seasons, an NFC North title, and two playoff appearances in the first three years. During that time, Adofo-Mensah found a way to continue winning and fixed a salary cap that was filled with brutal contracts and no flexibility.
His success shouldn’t be viewed as a one-off. Adofo-Mensah laid out a blueprint for success. You don’t have to unload every superstar just to get draft capital, as you can do it by keeping those players and putting the right pieces around them.
The ultimate goal is to win football games, and choosing not to win for an extended period isn’t a smart strategy. Once you choose not to win, it’s hard to get back into winning ways.
If the Jets end up taking every pick acquired and find superstars, then it will work. However, there is zero guarantee they end up getting there, and it could end up the exact same way the other teams did: in failure.