The Minnesota Vikings, having only four picks in the NFL Draft, have led to a lot of speculation about them trading down in the first round.

General manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah has made multiple trades in the NFL Draft, including three trades last year to move up in the draft.

In the first round, Adofo-Mensah has only traded down one time and it came with his first draft pick 12th overall in 2022. It hasn't made him gunshy when it comes to trades.

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Kwesi Adofo-Mensah talks about trading down 

The questions remains about how the Vikings will go about the NFL Draft. Will they take the best player available or trade down? Adofo-Mensah gave us some interesting insight about it.

"I'll start with the first part of that, just draft strategy, a lot of times it is its impact, and that impact can be one great player or multiple good players, also realizing that it's uncertain, and you don't know necessarily for sure that the one player is going to be good and and all those different dynamics. So that's really the conversation you have.

"You know right now, at this point the draft, we try and make sure our board is correct, or in terms of how we view things, you've got to prepare yourself. You're picking 24th, you better be able to call 24 and a half, 24 names, and you're willing to stand up and clap and feel great about so that's the first and foremost. And the foundation of how we build this thing, the trades and all those things, scenarios, they come, moving over to the charts and different valuations. It's a difficult exercise. It's something that I've been fascinated by."

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The idea that you need to make sure that you have 24 names you are confident in is one that doesn't get talked about enough. That ends up being a big reason why a team would trade down.

There is one other element when it comes to potentially trading down: finding value in such a move, including the news that Adofo-Mensah has built the trade chart himself

"I built the chart myself. I've seen other different charts, and they all take different assumptions that, or quite frankly, this is a hard exercise. How do you value a great player in a great position? You could assign a number to it, right, when you assign that number to it does that incorporate the scarcity of that type of player? If you don't get that player in the draft, you can't typically get that player in free agency. So how do you put a number on that aspect of it? It's in different people at different ways of doing that. And again, I've seen people in San Francisco do it in Cleveland, do it myself, all the different things. And you appreciate the different methods. I think the best thing you can do is understand why each chart is built the way it is, and kind of, maybe, for each decision you make, understand how you're using it for you, and kind of go with that chart value there. It's a great question. It's a fascinating thing. I don't know that anybody's going to solve it, because, you know, you're trying to assign a number to a thing that's not really perfectly easy to do."

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The news that Adofo-Mensah built his own trade chart is new, but it's a good insight about his process. Staying flexible with your process is an important factor to building a championship team and Adofo-Mensah has that and then some.

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