Tyler Forness: Stock Market Trader? How does Kwesi Adofo-Mensah Prioritize Draft Picks?

Kwesi Adofo-Mensah was billed as the "analytics GM" when the Vikings hired him. But his draft-day strategies seem to bely that. What's going on? Tyler Forness investigates.

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The Minnesota Vikings have gone through significant change over the last three years. The biggest change has been how the Vikings approach the NFL Draft. In the previous era, the front office under Rick Spielman was set on trading down consistently and getting as many picks as they could. Theoretically, the more shots you have, the better chance you get at landing a star player.

An alternate view argues that the same could be said for staying at higher picks to take better players. Players picked higher are theoretically better than those selected later in the draft and there is an argument to stay and take the better player over getting value. But for Spielman, Getting more draft picks was always the strategy during his tenure with the Vikings.

Kwesi Adofo-Mensah has put less value into making draft picks. They swapped picks with the Detroit Lions to acquire T.J. Hockenson, traded a seventh for Nick Mullens and swapped picks for Josh Dobbs. Getting players with draft picks has been a priority. 

Trades for the Vikings have been important under this new management as well. They have made 12 trades during the NFL Draft in the Adofo-Mensah era with seven of them working up the draft order. Is there anything we can gather from how Adofo-Mensah has approached the trade market?

Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s Approach

For being an “analytics” guy, Adofo-Mensah’s approach has been really interesting. Seven trade-ups in just 15 rounds is a lot considering only one (two if you count acquiring 23rd overall) was for a quarterback.

The general consensus among those who engage with analytics is that you only trade up for a quarterback because it can give you a significant amount of surplus value. Now, trading later-round picks in a trade-up isn’t nearly the same as doing so early in the draft. The difference between players 125 and 140 on the consensus board is significantly smaller and less impactful than the difference between players 10 and 20 on the consensus board.

In the first round of the draft, Adofo-Mensah traded down in 2022 and made three trades up in 2024. That’s a significant amount of movement for him. Now, you can attribute two of those to quarterback decisions which puts things in a different context.

The second round has seen the Vikings move four total times with three of them coming in 2022. Adofo-Mensah tried to capitalize on value by moving down and then up to target a specific player. In this sense, he has treated this like the stock market, which is fitting, given his Wall Street background.

The big trades are the ones that do the most damage when it comes to gaining or losing value because they are the most valuable picks. The trades up with round one picks are fascinating to take a look at.

Trades Up