The Minnesota Vikings made waves by moving on from general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah the day after Senior Bowl practices ended. That raised many red flags about their process, especially since Adofo-Mensah represented them in Mobile.

So far, the Vikings have announced a whopping 10 candidates for the job: nine external and their interim general manager, Rob Brzezinski. The external candidates are a diverse group who share two things: the assistant general manager title and a scouting background.

• Buffalo Bills assistant general manager Terrance Gray
• Los Angeles Chargers assistant general manager Chad Alexander
• Los Angeles Rams assistant general manager John McKay
• San Francisco 49ers assistant general manager R.J. Gillan
• Tennessee Titans assistant general manager Dave Ziegler
• Seattle Seahawks assistant general manager Nolan Teasley
• Detroit Lions assistant general manager Ray Agnew
• Miami Dolphins assistant general manager Kyle Smith
• Denver Broncos assistant general manager Reed Burckhardt

Minnesota Vikings’ new GM could be hamstrung from the start

We’ve gotten a lot of information about how the Vikings are going to conduct their search for a new general manager. The latest piece of intel came from ESPN’s Kevin Seifert talking about Mark and Zygi Wilf’s process of hiring a general manager.

It is always possible that the Wilfs will reconsider that approach, but everything known about their search indicates they envision a first-time general manager pairing with an existing staff. Even if they ultimately choose Brzezinski — the only known candidate without a classic scouting background — the structure would preserve much of the current scouting department. It also wouldn’t infringe on the power O’Connell and his staff accumulated during Adofo-Mensah’s tenure and while Brzezinski served as interim general manager.

ESPN’s Kevin Seifert

Read these words carefully: pairing a first-time general manager with an existing staff. Do they mean keeping the entirety of the scouting staff and personnel department? Seifert made that case for hiring Brzezinski, and forcing a new general manager to keep the incumbent staff would be a terrible process.

We know that Adofo-Mensah has been scapegoated for all of the bad things that have happened over the last four years. It also said the decision to fire him was a strong signal that the date is good, but the decision maker was the only issue. Forcing an external candidate to keep everyone in place would be a brutal decision that could ruin the future of this franchise.

Only time will tell how the Vikings go about pursuing this, but there is real concern.