The real reason Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s paternity leave was an issue is why the Minnesota Vikings fired him

The paternity leave that Kwesi Adofo-Mensah took is a symptom of the reason he got fired.

Tyler Forness — NFL & College Football News Writer
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Feb 25, 2025; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Minnesota Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah speaks during the NFL Scouting Combine at the Indiana Convention Center.
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The Minnesota Vikings fired general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, and the discussion surrounding his dismissal has been fascinating.

The biggest reasons for moving on were evident. Adofo-Mensah’s draft resume was just not up to par. He did find some talented players in wide receiver Jordan Addison, edge rusher Dallas Turner, and kicker Will Reichard, but having the second fewest starts among players the team drafted at 172 since he took over in 2022 is a brutal look.

Owner Mark Wilf said the decision wasn’t based on one decision.

“It’s not about any one decision or move,” Wilf said during Friday’s press conference. “We looked at the situation cumulatively. We just didn’t feel confident going through the entirety of the offseason an additional draft, and free agency. With this structure, we have an urgency to create a winning football team and establish sustainable success for our fans. At the same time, we balance that urgency with all decisions thoroughly and methodically winning football. That’s what drives all our decision-making and is the core of all our efforts.”

Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s paternity leave causes major stir

Once Adofo-Mensah was let go, stories started to leak about his tenure with the Vikings. One of the biggest came from The Athletic’s Alec Lewis and Dianna Russini that he took paternity leave during training camp in 2023.

“The next summer offered more evidence that Adofo-Mensah approached the work-life component of the role differently from many of his NFL peers,” Russini and Lewis wrote. “Following the birth of his first child, the general manager left for paternity leave, missing about two weeks of training camp meetings and practices and working remotely during that stretch. Word of his time away from the team traveled quickly around the league. Among some rival executives and coaches, it was met with disbelief.”

In the corporate world, taking paternity leave is a big nothing burger. Most companies have systems in place to handle someone being away for a few weeks. In the NFL, taking that leave during such a big time in the calendar was viewed as a huge no-no.

“In an NFL culture where many players, coaches, and executives proudly acknowledge missing the births of their children, taking time away to care for a newborn and support a partner remains uncommon. (Just this week, new Bills head coach Joe Brady openly shared that he missed the birth of one of his children and found out after a game that the baby had arrived.)

“The Vikings were publicly supportive of Adofo-Mensah’s time away. He had made a commitment to his family well before the Vikings hired him. The NFL standard wasn’t going to affect that commitment.”

Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s leadership was why paternity leave was a bigger deal

It’s important to note that the sources Lewis and Russini gathered were outside the building, and he had support from inside. However, the optics of this are what’s most important.

The biggest thing that Adofo-Mensah preached when taking the job was collaboration. He talked about how important it was during his introductory press conference.

“I know my background is unique,” Adofo-Mensah said at his introductory news conference. “But when you think about this job, the job is about making decisions, building consensus in the building, combining different sources of information into one answer, and having everybody behind it. Along those lines, I don’t think there’s many people more qualified.

“That word culture gets thrown around a lot, but it’s so critical. Alignment doesn’t mean having the same mind or thinking the same, but just general core beliefs, ways of solving problems, a constructive attitude towards mistakes. Those things really matter.”

The collaboration didn’t result in success or a positive culture. There seemed to be little belief in how good he was at his job. One area that comes up is accessibility, as ESPN’s Kevin Seifert reported that the Wilfs had to tell him to be more available.

“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,” Seifert wrote. “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.”

If he had been more accessible and had a strong culture in the building, as Lewis and Russini mentioned, and if issues had not arisen just ahead of the 2023 offseason, perhaps things would’ve been different for him.

“The Vikings’ coaches had intentionally increased their role in scouting college players before the 2023 draft, openly talking about wanting to guard against a duplicate of Adofo-Mensah’s first draft. They showed up in the spring at all-star games en masse. Coaches’ priorities later played a major role in how the Vikings organized their draft board and prioritized which undrafted signings to target, team sources said.

“Personnel staffers often believed certain signings did not fit their direct timeline, but coaches tended to prefer veterans who could make immediate impacts. Team sources posited that they couldn’t always discern whose say weighed more than others, who made the final decision, and why, even if Adofo-Mensah contractually oversaw personnel. The conditions were widely known throughout the league, with one prominent agent saying weeks ago, ‘I’ve seen and heard enough from leadership to question (the dynamics), personally.’”

If there had been a strong culture and belief in the systems Adofo-Mensah instilled in the front office, would we even have heard about the paternity leave? In theory, Adofo-Mensah would have everyone clicking on all cylinders, and working remotely would have been viewed as better.

Overall, the collaboration effort Adofo-Mensah sought to cultivate didn’t materialize as he intended, which caused issues across the board. That failure is a major reason why the paternity thing was such a big deal, because if things were great and a well-operated machine, it’s a nothing burger.

Now, the Vikings are hopeful they can change things for the better.

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