Kwesi Offers the Key to Re-Signing Vikings’ Star Players
He didn’t talk for very long, but Kwesi Adofo-Mensah still said quite a bit.
The Vikings’ GM handled all of the hot-button issues, jumping into conversations surrounding Kirk Cousins, Danielle Hunter, and, of course, Justin Jefferson (who isn’t being traded). Notably, Adofo-Mensah repeated a few words within his answers about getting new deals done.
Kwesi Adofo-Mensah on the Key to Re-Signing the Team’s Stars
The first thing to note is that Adofo-Mensah isn’t oppositional in his outlook. The man has convictions and strong opinions, ones that he won’t be easily moved from. He does, however, have the capacity to see where a player is coming from on the other side of the table.
No doubt, the GM wants to keep Hunter in Minnesota and yet there’s an understanding that the player is looking to take care of himself. “Always gotta remember,” Adofo-Mensah clarifies, “the players have their needs, from their standpoint. I always respect that.”
Adofo-Mensah, though, did offer some insight about the key to overcoming the issue: “meet in the middle.”
While chatting about the team’s star edge rusher, Adofo-Mensah clarified that he’s looking to arrive at a mutually-beneficial middle ground: “So we’ll go to the table and we’ll see if we can figure out, see if we can talk about, a way to kind of find a deal to meet in the middle.” (If the answers seems a bit choppy, it’s because it was; later on, Adofo-Mensah humorously clarified that he was distracted by how loud Mike McDaniel was talking not too far from where the GM was having his press conference).
Choppiness aside, the point stands: the key is to meet in the middle.
And then there’s the reflections on Cousins and what a deal could look like. Again, Adofo-Mensah brings things around to the central idea. He begins by noting that he’s in a “great place” with the quarterback before describing the need to “get to the table and see if we can figure out a creative solution and how to meet in the middle.”
Shortly thereafter, Adofo-Mensah even clarified that Cousins is someone the Vikings “can win the ultimate prize with.”
Hearing someone explain that needing to meet in the middle in a negotiation isn’t earth shattering news. What’s notable is simply how amicably the GM discusses the players with whom he has been having long-standing negotiations. All professionalism from the young executive.
At the end of the day, the best guess continues to be that Cousins and Hunter will keep calling Minnesota home. All sides — the team’s leadership and the players — have publicly discussed their desire to see the relationship continue.
Getting the contracts across the finish line, though, will require both sides to meet in the middle.
Vikings Rumors: A Staggering $51 Million, Tamper Tuesday, & The QB Overcoming Context
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.
