NFL Combine

“To win at the highest level, it's pretty hard to do it without good quarterback play,” the Vikings’ GM said. “So globally, that question needs to be answered. Now does it need to be answered this year versus the next five years and things like that. It's trying to be smart about how you try to answer that question generally to sustain success in the NFL. But again, he's under contract, Kirk's our quarterback.”

Two things here: The mention of Cousins being under contract reads like it’s leaving out the next three words of the sentence (“for right now”). Also when Adofo-Mensah talks about next year versus five years, it appears to be touching on the idea that Cousins might not be the long-term option and that the long-term option may not be answered right away.

Next up, a fundamental question: How much did Mike Zimmer hold back Cousins? (Of course, it was asked in a more Minnesota Nice way).

“Especially coming from my background, I don't always know if they do it the right way [when evaluating quarterbacks],” Adofo-Mensah said. “Yards, things like that, it's not always the best way to judge a quarterback.”

Nobody thought Adofo-Mensah used fantasy stats on Wall Street, right?

“You start a play versus a certain look and maybe a certain pressure's coming and your best play might be an incompletion and people don't realize that, so how do you start at it from a play level and take that to a macro level and really evaluate his position.”

This word salad is harkening to a common idea with Cousins: If you give him time to throw, he will be good. The numbers certainly confirm that as Cousins ranked second in the NFL in clean-pocket QB rating. Only minutes before Adofo-Mensah met with the TC beat in the JW, he was across the street at the podium inside the convention center saying, “When the odds are shifted in his favor, he gets the most out of it.”

Does this mean the Vikings’ plan if Cousins stays is to call more second down passes and sign some lineman and let the chips fall where they may? Possibly.

“In this world and probably in general that we try and focus on things people can't do,” Adofo-Mensah said. “We try to focus on what he can do.”

Adofo-Mensah appears familiar with the well-established criticisms of Cousins’ playmaking and off-schedule abilities.

Now here’s where it gets spicy. Kwesi, do you believe that this is a weak QB draft class?

“It's funny, I just had a conversation with somebody about that, I would probably go back and ask people what they thought about Mahomes and Watson's class. I thought they said the same thing,” Adofo-Mensah said.

He’s not wrong. In 2017, draft analysts and NFL teams were in lockstep: The QB class was weak. NFL.com said it was “lacking elite talent” and the league took two running backs before Mahomes and Watson. That wasn’t an outlier result either. If the NFL was actually good at analyzing quarterbacks, Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen would have gone No. 1 and No. 2 overall in 2018. Which leads to Adofo-Mensah’s next point…

“You're just guessing, you're predicting,” Adofo-Mensah said. “We have information today and you watch a player and then you see in five years what they are like. Those things don't always line up. People come through, they improve their mechanics, they get different coaching, they get in different schemes that fit their skillsets. I'm not going to sit here and stamp that this isn't a great quarterback because I see a lot of good stuff on film from these guys.”

Some rare honesty amongst NFL decision makers. But the smartest people usually know what they don’t know and anybody who claims to have the magic potion to figure out quarterbacks is selling snake oil.

Adofo-Mensah proceeded to rave about what he heard from the quarterbacks in interviews. Not that it’s a surprise but the Vikings are indeed meeting with the QBs.

“We interviewed them yesterday and, man, it's incredible… you see it from these guys and they come in and you're trying to grade them on their recall and it's like, they're all great. It's some level of great,” Adofo-Mensah said. “You're trying to mince small details there. Again, I'm not going to sit here and stamp this quarterback class. I think there's a lot of talent there and we'll see what happens.”

Yes we will.

2. New head coach Kevin O’Connell announced the completion of his coaching staff here, and one position caught my eye. O’Connell hired Ryan Cordell as the game management coordinator and passing-game specialist. The first part of that job title is especially intriguing.

Coaches often make costly mistakes with in-game management due to poor use of timeouts or simple play calling. So O’Connell felt compelled to hire a young coach whose top focus will be in that phase.

“One of our critical football philosophy points … is being situational masters, and that’s a term that you throw out there: What does that mean?” O’Connell said when asked about Cordell’s new position. “It’s an all-encompassing approach to how you handle the situations in games, and that’s a year-round thing. It’s in the spring. We’ll be constantly looking at what we would do in certain situations, having plans for those situations that come up. And then you practice them and teach not only your offense but you teach defensively how you’re going to defend that exact situation. How special teams fits into the mix is always a huge thing because they fit right in with either scoring points or trying to take points away.”

Minnesota OT, Daniel Faalele weighs in at 6'8", 384lbs. Heaviest player since at least 2006.