Vikings owners planning contract talks with Kevin O’Connell, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah after the season

The Vikings enter the final week of Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s and Kevin O’Connell’s third season together in Minnesota with a 14-2 record, their best since 1998. Once the season is done, their ownership plans to begin talks with the general manager and head coach about contract extensions.

In a recent interview with the Minnesota Star Tribune about the Wilf family’s 20 seasons owning the Vikings, co-owner Mark Wilf was asked how high the owners’ interest level is in reaching new deals with Adofo-Mensah and O’Connell this offseason.

“We’re looking forward to a great future with these guys,” he said. “We look forward to having those conversations with each of them after the season. We have tremendous confidence, and we look forward to their continued leadership of the franchise.”

The Vikings are 34-16 in the regular season under Adofo-Mensah and O’Connell, who this year became the first coach in Vikings history to post two 13-win seasons after going 13-4 in 2022. A victory on Sunday would give the Vikings their second NFC North title in three years, and their sixth since the Wilfs bought the team in 2005.

O’Connell and Adofo-Mensah are both on contracts that expire after the 2025 season, and they entered the season overseeing a quarterback change after Kirk Cousins left for Atlanta after six seasons in Minnesota. Wilf praised the Vikings’ leaders when he spoke to reporters in August but said then that the owners weren’t considering extensions “at this time.”

The team had given Mike Zimmer his first contract extension after two seasons as head coach in 2016, but the Vikings’ standard practice has been to wait until the final year of a coach’s or GM’s deal before finalizing extensions, as they did for Zimmer and Rick Spielman before giving the former coach and GM one-year extensions in 2019 and three-year extensions in 2020.

During the interview with the Star Tribune, both Zygi and Mark Wilf praised the jobs Adofo-Mensah and O’Connell have done, with Zygi Wilf saying the owners believe they have got the right people in charge of the organization for the long term.

“We realize how important it is from a football sense to get the right people involved,” Zygi Wilf said. “You go through trials and errors, and you hope eventually you come out with the right people. Certainly in our organization and our coaching staff, we do believe we have the best people involved. So we’re just very proud of that.”