Who Will Take the Fall for this Disaster?
The Vikings’ 2025 season has been a disaster, and it’s fair to wonder about the job security of the people in charge.
Both GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and HC Kevin O’Connell have built up some goodwill with 13- and 14-win seasons in 2022 and 2024, respectively, and both signed extensions during the 2025 offseason.
Still, as the saying goes, the NFL stands for “Not For Long,” and goodwill gets used up in a hurry with a season like this. The Vikings bet big on an unproven QB in J.J. McCarthy, and with his failure, the team looks directionless and hopeless for the foreseeable future.
Personally, I have generally supported both Adofo-Mensah and O’Connell, and I think they’ve earned another offseason to see if they can right the ship. But there is no denying that Kwesi’s big plan is failing, and his inability to draft impact players is taking a toll on the current roster. This has led some Vikings fans to the conclusion that the team should move on from Kwesi, perhaps even while keeping KOC and DC Brian Flores in the building.
Historically, though, it is uncommon for a team to fire a GM while keeping the head coach in place. It does happen—Mike McDaniel was recently retained by the new Dolphins GM Champ Kelly, and Brian Callahan was (briefly) kept on by new Titans GM Mike Borgonzi. Ravens head coach John Harbaugh, who’s been with the team since 2008, seems to transcend upper management decisions.
But those cases are the exception, not the rule. When a team hires a new GM, they are signing up for a new direction, typically because the old one wasn’t working. It’s up to the new GM to bring in their own people, and it’s unusual for them to prefer the current coaching staff over all available candidates.
In the case of the Vikings, although most would agree that Kwesi deserves blame for poor draft picks, there is a growing body of evidence that the Vikings’ real issue might be the coaching staff’s inability to develop the team’s draft picks.
Disappointing 2022 draft pick OG Ed Ingram has thrived after leaving Minnesota, and a handful of consensus board first-round talents (Lewis Cine, Andrew Booth Jr., Dallas Turner, and J.J. McCarthy) have underwhelmed in their time in Minnesota. The fact that Kwesi’s best acquisitions have all been veterans acquired via free agency or trade points to a development issue.
Kwesi and KOC have developed a great rapport in their time working together, and it’s hard to imagine Kwesi firing KOC after one bad season. But the offense has been so unbearably, historically terrible in the last few weeks that he may have no other choice. In the face of continued horrendous play, KOC’s sacking might be the only thing that saves Kwesi’s job; indeed, even that might not be enough.
Having said that, it’s unlikely that things will stay quite this bad for the Vikings’ offense. The last two games have been two of the worst in team history, and some level of statistical regression can be expected, even if the team itself continues to lose. Any improvement from McCarthy might be enough to buy KOC and Kwesi another year.
All the options are on the table, but at this point, it still seems most likely that the people taking the fall for this disaster will be lower-level coaching staff like QB coach Josh McCown, special teams coordinator Matt Daniels, and perhaps even OC Wes Phillips. A lower-level shakeup may be just what the Vikings need to get back to their winning ways; at the least, it would help clarify just how high the Vikings’ issues go.