Did Kwesi Completely Whiff?
Back in 2022, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah inherited an aging, underperforming defense.
A major part of the initial response was to sink a ton of draft capital into that side of the ball. Minnesota stepped away from the 2022 NFL Draft after having made ten selections. Five of the opening six selections went toward fortifying Ed Donatell’s defense. How has that turned out?
Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and The 2022 Defensive Picks
For starters, Donatell is no longer around. That simple fact underscores how poorly things went in Year 1 for that Minnesota defense.
Thankfully, the tide is turning after Brian Flores got hired. The new defensive coordinator is far more aggressive than his predecessor and has put together a far more sophisticated scheme. Add it all together and Minnesota jumped from 28th in the NFL for points against in 2022 to 13th in points against in 2023.
The issue, of course, is that the new DC has had a similar relationship with the draft picks from Adofo-Mensah. Put simply, most have become an afterthought, depth pieces with little chance of starting.
Consider who got picked and where they were chosen:
| Player | RD & No. | Position | Career Snaps w/ Vikings |
| Lewis Cine | RD1, No. 32 | Safety | 10 |
| Andrew Booth Jr. | RD2, No. 42 | Corner | 256 |
| Brian Asamoah | RD3, No. 66 | Linebacker | 155 |
| Akayleb Evans | RD4, No. 118 | Corner | 1,017 |
| Esezi Otomewo | RD5, No. 165 | Defensive End | 89 |
Some context for the snap counts. Playing 100% of the time will mean a player is clearing the 1,000-snap threshold in a single season. Take, for instance, safety Camryn Bynum. He played 100% of the time in 2022 and was on the field for 1,161 snaps. Fast forward to 2023 and it was 99% of the time for 1,122 snaps.
So, we’re not talking about major playing time for the defenders we’re discussing. Only Mr. Evans — the long and strong corner who got benched down the stretch of the season — has been a large part of the defense.
Keep in mind that Otomewo has been cut. The 3-4 defensive end didn’t survive the switch over to the Flores defense, meaning that one out of the five defenders — 20% — has been cut. If the expected happens, then the number is going to grow.
The word is that Asamoah has been demoted. Ivan Pace Jr. and Blake Cashman are very obviously the top pair since the first name is coming off a stellar rookie season and the second name is coming off a major free-agent deal. But then there’s the Kamu Grugier-Hill addition, an older linebacker who appears to be the LB3.
Asamoah, though, still has a shot at getting his career off the ground. He’s aggressive and moves well. Just as safeties are sometimes tasked with doing linebacker things, one wonders if Asamoah, a linebacker, can do safety things.
In other words, Asamoah may need to show himself capable of taking on a tight end one-on-one on passing downs. He may need to show he can hang in slot coverage and also be capable of flying over to the flats to blow up a screen. Basically, do some of the things that Josh Metellus and Harrison Smith do.
Akayleb Evans is the defender who offers the most promise. Last season, the corner started in fifteen games while putting up 65 tackles, 7 passes defended, 1 interception, and 3 forced fumbles. At 6’2″ he can be a matchup weapon and he has the ability to be a strong tackler.
The problem is that he got benched at the end of the season and his confidence looked to be gone. For a corner, confidence is everything. The upside is that he’s still only 25 and Minnesota won’t be moving on from him. Look for him to be in the running for the CB3 job, which is essentially a starting position in the modern NFL.
That brings things down to the initial pair of picks, Cine and Booth. The two are both trade candidates since neither is assured of a roster spot in Minnesota. Going into the draft, a lot of teams liked Cine and Booth, so one wonders if there would be a taker at this point in time. Does a 6th or a 7th prompt Minnesota to move on from one of their underperforming DBs?
What’s evident at this stage is that both are trending in the wrong direction with the Vikings.
Add it all up and it wouldn’t be fair to say that Kwesi Adofo-Mensah completely whiffed. Cine and Booth look like bad misses; Otomewo is already gone. Evans and Asamaoh have the potential to still hit, if only as LB3 and CB3.
In a lot of ways, then, the defensive component of the Vikings’ 2022 draft looks like a failure even as we acknowledge that we still have to let things play out a bit more.
Editor’s Note: Information from Pro Football Reference helped with this piece.
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K. Joudry is the Senior Editor for Vikings Territory and PurplePTSD. He has been covering the Vikings full time since the summer of 2021. He can be found on Twitter and as a co-host for Notes from the North, a humble Vikings podcast.