Vikings NFL Draft scouting process proves Kwesi Adofo-Mensah's due diligence pays dividends years later

The NFL Draft has come and went for the Minnesota Vikings and it was an impactful weekend. They only made five draft picks, but executed three trades to maximize their return. General manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah had only traded down once over the last two NFL Drafts, which led me to wonder if he was a […]

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.
Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

The NFL Draft has come and went for the Minnesota Vikings and it was an impactful weekend. They only made five draft picks, but executed three trades to maximize their return.

General manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah had only traded down once over the last two NFL Drafts, which led me to wonder if he was a little gun-shy after the trade down that resulted in Lewis Cine. That didn't happen over the weekend, as Adofo-Mensah made that abundantly clear.

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Vikings scouting Sam Howell out of college led to trading for him

The maneuvering down the board on day three ended up gaining the Vikings an extra draft pick and a backup quarterback in Sam Howell. They needed to sign a backup quarterback at some point, but the likely time was going to be after the draft due to the compensatory formula expiring.

How did the Vikings come upon Howell to be the backup quarterback? It all started during the 2022 NFL Draft process when they scouted Howell.

"We did some work on him. I like that word, ‘did some work,’ because coming in from my background, a lot of it was the film work, and it was the evaluation of statistics and different things like that," said Adofo-Mensah after the NFL Draft. "And as we talked a lot about it at length, drafting a quarterback is a marriage. That level of commitment, relationship building, relationship understanding, you've got to meet the friends, you've got to meet the family, you've got to do all that sort of courtship. We didn't think in that first year together, when Kevin [O’Connell] and I got together, that was the right time in our journey to make such an investment.

"We say a lot that organizations fail quarterbacks long before quarterbacks fail organizations. And we didn't want those to be one of the reasons why somebody didn't because we weren't ready, we weren't in the right place to do that type of thing. We didn't think it was the right time. But on talent and all the other things we talk about, he was high up on our board, but just didn't think it was the right time and place. Sometimes it happens in life; maybe the person you're dating is not the right time and place, but later on in life it happens at a better time."

The mantra of drafting a quarterback is a marriage is one that the Vikings have held true upon. They waited until they found the right guy and they did in J.J. McCarthy.

Howell has plenty of talent to be the backup quarterback, but he's also not going to be challenging McCarthy for the starting job. His capable arm talent, paired with his rushing ability and toughness, makes for a good archetype as a backup quarterback.

The other element here that's important is how they came across Howell. You never know when that player could become available and having done the work ahead of time gives you a leg up. 

It's chess, not checkers from Adofo-Mensah.

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