Logic Lessons with Kwesi Adofo-Mensah
K. Joudry
|
Earlier in the offseason, we heard Kwesi Adofo-Mensah clarify his alternative approach to building the Minnesota roster. His Vikings were pursuing a “competitive rebuild.”
After explaining how football folks can discuss team building “in a very binary way,” the purple GM clarifies his approach:
They ask, ‘Are you either all-in or tearing down and rebuilding?’ And I don’t really look at the world that way. The way we look at it is we’re trying to navigate both worlds. We’re trying to live in today and tomorrow, or the competitive rebuild, however you want to phrase it or market it, and so I think that’s kind of how we’ve approached this offseason.
In this explanation, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah is addressing false dichotomies, a logical fallacy. A false dichotomy addresses an issue by positing that there are only two options when more options actually exist (that’s the “di” portion of the word “dichotomy”). So, if someone said that an NFL offense needs to be run-first or embrace an air-raid approach, we could respond by saying it’s a false dichotomy. There are more options for NFL offenses than just these two.
Similarly, one can build a team in a variety of ways.
Those who lean toward pessimism may argue that opting for a middle way means doing a lousy job at both things. Rather than get the full benefits of a full teardown or being 100% in on 2022, the Vikings run the risk of maintaining their position in football purgatory.
The upside, though, is that Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and his Vikings may be able to have their purple cake and eat it too. If things go well, Minnesota will be considerably more competitive in 2022. This increased competitiveness doesn’t necessarily come at the cost of future success, either. The Vikings are heading into some really good financial flexibility in 2024, so we may find ourselves with a lot of new talent in the not-too-distant future.
Part of what makes Kwesi’s answer so interesting is that he easily could have just given a standard answer that doesn’t reveal his reasoning. Instead of doing so, he taught us a little about logic, training writers and fans on how to understand his approach.
[brid autoplay=”true” video=”1013719″ player=”26281″ title=”WATCH%20Identifying%20the%203%20best%20Julio%20Jones%20free%20agent%20landing%20spots” duration=”112″ description=”Julio Jones remains a free agent two months after being released by the Tennessee Titans. As training camp approaches, interest should pick up in the star wide receiver with Super Bowl contenders looking for another big weapon to help their quarterback.” uploaddate=”2022-05-16″ thumbnailurl=”undefined” contentUrl=”https://cdn.brid.tv/live/partners/17660/streaming/1013670/1013670.m3u8″ width=”16″ height=”9″]