Analysis: Vikings’ small draft class fits neatly into Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s big plan

At the beginning of each offseason, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah begins what he calls his favorite part of his job as Vikings general manager, scribbling down a series of thoughts about the team he wants to build with coach Kevin O’Connell and stitching those thoughts into a vision for the upcoming year’s team.

“I don’t know if you want the 22-page manifesto,” he said Saturday, when asked to summarize the vision.

Is it really 22 pages?

“It’s long,” he said. “When you wake up and you think about different things, you learn from other sports, other teams in the league. You see a team doing something different, and you try and see where the game’s going. So it’s just a lot of planning. All those connected things are musings, and then I wake up and tell them to Kevin, [Executive Vice President of Football Operations] Rob [Brzezinski], or I tell them to my staff. They say, ‘That’s crazy,’ or, ‘Yeah, you’re right.’ And then it comes out a vision. We’re almost like a band, where we kind of come up with a song, everybody’s got ideas and you guys get to see the final product. Hopefully it’s a beautiful song, like ‘Bicycle’ by Queen or something like that, and not something on the worst hits tracks.”

The Vikings’ 2025 draft class, only five players deep, is tied for the smallest in the team’s 65-year history, but the players in the class are connected to the vision Adofo-Mensah and O’Connell laid out at the beginning of the offseason. If there’s a refrain under which to organize their notes about the 2025 Vikings, it might be what Adofo-Mensah said late Saturday afternoon following the team’s final pick:

“To win four [playoff] games, or however many you need to win the ultimate prize, you can get into different types of fights,” he said. “You don’t know what type of fight it’s going to be when you enter it. You want to have the type of roster, the type of schemes that will allow you to win any type of game.”

It’s tough to say the Vikings, who were favored in two wild-card games but knocked out of the playoffs twice in the past three years, were primed to win in multiple ways. Their interior offensive line was overwhelmed in their loss to the Giants two years ago, and they gave up nine sacks to the Rams in January. They have struggled to build an offense that can pick up short-yardage conversions, or finish drives in goal-to-go situations. They leaned on a prolific passing game in 2022, and complemented it with a deceptive defense in 2024, only to see their ingenuity nullified in playoff games that required grit and forcefulness they weren’t able to provide.

The Vikings’ $300 million spending spree at the beginning of free agency was aimed at fortifying the middle of the roster. Their draft strategy took a similar tack.

First-round pick Donovan Jackson, the first guard the Vikings have taken in the first round since Randall McDaniel, should get the chance to start at left guard and combine with Ryan Kelly and Will Fries to provide the kind of interior force the Vikings haven’t fielded in years. The three will play between tackles Christian Darrisaw and Brian O’Neill, giving the Vikings a size upgrade on the offensive line as they continue to incorporate more downhill runs with Jordan Mason joining Aaron Jones in the backfield. Sixth-round tight end Gavin Bartholomew made his impression at Pitt with his tenacious approach to run blocking.

Georgia defensive lineman Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins, a fifth-round pick, is a lithe pass rusher who joins free agents Jonathan Allen and Javon Hargrave as part of the Vikings’ effort to upgrade their interior push, forcing quarterbacks to deal with the kind of up-the-middle havoc the Vikings offense has struggled to handle. The Vikings spent considerable time scouting defensive linemen even after signing the two veterans this offseason; Senior Vice President of Player Personnel Ryan Grigson said Ingram-Dawkins’ speed, flexibility and powerful hands stuck out to the Vikings as early as the Senior Bowl.

“The body type itself isn’t always easy to come by, because he can use that length, and he does have speed off the edge for a guy that’s 280 pounds,” Grigson said. “But then you bring him inside, and it’s hard a lot of times for a bulk of the guards in the NFL to athletically match what he can do.”

And Penn State linebacker Kobe King, the first of the Vikings’ two sixth-round picks, is “a really physical, knock-back, impact tackler” who could join Ivan Pace Jr. in the team’s complement of downhill linebackers and see time in run situations, while playing an early role on special teams.

The NFL adjusted its kickoff rules again this offseason, moving the ball out to the 35-yard line after touchbacks to incentivize teams to put the ball in play; King’s ability to play multiple special teams phases seemed attractive to the Vikings, as did the speed third-round receiver Tai Felton could use as a return man.

The Vikings’ push for more size and edge comes as they prepare J.J. McCarthy for his first full NFL season, as the 10th overall pick in last year’s draft takes over the starting QB position following last year’s torn meniscus. It makes sense they would want a stronger run game and stouter defensive front to help the 22-year-old, who won a national championship with a team that featured those qualities at Michigan, but the effort also seems to be about more than McCarthy.

“My job is to constantly be an evaluator of the totality of our time here: what it’s been like for me as the play caller, but also how we play football games, how we play complementary in all three phases,” O’Connell said after the Vikings drafted Jackson on Thursday night. “[It’s] just looking at it from a standpoint of what winning football looks like; being a team that is worthy of competing to win a world championship, what that looks like. It’s exciting to draw routes up on a board, and come up with new ideas. That stuff’s been great, and we’ve done a lot of really good things here. But time and time again, you continue to think about the ability to get that yard, the ability to go be physical in every game you play, regardless of the opponent.”

It’s a thought process that has comes from the countless hours O’Connell and Adofo-Mensah have spent stewing over the two playoff losses and the lessons they delivered about what the Vikings need to win in the playoffs.

Their offseason showed they have reached the conclusion that to win in the postseason, they need a team with a square jaw and a full complement of punches. The five players they picked this weekend fit clearly into that manifesto.

Andrew Krammer and Emily Leiker of the Minnesota Star Tribune break down the Vikings 2025 draft class on the Access Vikings podcast:

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