Is Kwesi Adofo-Mensah Bad at Drafting?
The recent departure of Mekhi Blackmon, who was traded to the Colts for a sixth-round pick, has precipitated debate amongst Vikings fans. Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s first two draft classes have now produced only one bona fide starter (WR Jordan Addison), which by all accounts is simply not good enough.
But there’s a difference between recognizing that Kwesi’s past draft performance has been poor vs. projecting that his future draft performance will continue to be poor. At the heart of this distinction lies the question of sample size: do we have enough data to render judgment on Kwesi’s draft skills?
This is a complex question to answer definitively, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s divide Kwesi’s picks into binary categories of “hits” and “misses.” Hits are competent, multi-year starters for the team. Everyone else is considered a miss.
At this point, it’s safe to say that Jordan Addison is a hit—indeed, he is the only clear and obvious hit from Kwesi’s draft classes, strictly speaking.
However, there is a case to be made that both T.J. Hockenson (who was acquired at the cost of the Vikings’ 2023 2nd-round pick) and Ivan Pace Jr. (who was signed as a UDFA right after the 2023 draft) should count as well.
If the goal is to assess Kwesi and company’s ability to identify promising prospects out of college, I think it is clear that Pace Jr. should count as a Kwesi hit while Hockenson should not. The fact that the Vikings didn’t have to spend a draft pick on Pace Jr. is a credit rather than a demerit for Kwesi: it demonstrates his ability to acquire talent from the college ranks at a low cost. In contrast, while the Hockenson trade has worked out very well for the Vikings, it testifies to the front office’s ability to scout NFL players rather than college players.
The jury is still out on J.J. McCarthy and Dallas Turner, so it would be premature to judge the 2024 draft class. At this point, then, all we can confidently say is that Kwesi has two hits out of his first two draft/UDFA classes.
That’s not great, but it’s worth emphasizing that even the best GMs tend to hit on roughly two picks per year. Of course, there are exceptions like the 2017 Saints draft class, but even a team like the Super Bowl champion Eagles has hit on just two or three picks per year for the last few years.
It’s clear, then, that Kwesi’s draft performance so far has been sub-par: he has just two hits over a time span when an average GM would have around four. But two years is also a rather small sample size. Modeling the number of “hits per draft” as a Poisson distribution with an average of two, the probability that an average GM would hit on two or fewer picks over the course of two drafts is about 25%. In other words, Kwesi’s underperformance is not statistically significant, and more time is needed before a verdict can be rendered.
Going beyond the competent starters, it is surprising how many of Kwesi’s draft picks are no longer with the team. But this seems to reflect Kwesi’s philosophy of moving on from mistakes quickly rather than an inherent lack of mid-range talent.
On the free-agent front, Kwesi has been phenomenal, which is the main reason why the 2024 Vikings were so successful. In the long term, though, it’s very difficult to build a perennial contender without success in the draft. Kwesi needs to improve, but it’s still too early to say he can’t get there.