Vikings hire Browns' Kwesi Adofo-Mensah as GM

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com.

The Minnesota Vikings have hired Kwesi Adofo-Mensah as their general manager, according to a person with knowledge of the process, taking an innovative turn by bringing in an analytics expert from Cleveland’s front office who once worked on Wall Street.

The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity on Wednesday because the Vikings had not yet announced the decision.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM

Adofo-Mensah, the vice president of football operations for the Browns for the past two years, was one of two finalists the Vikings identified from an initial pool of eight candidates.

The other was Kansas City executive director of player personnel Ryan Poles, who was hired as general manager of the Chicago Bears on Tuesday before he made it to Minnesota for his scheduled visit. Adofo-Mensah was at Vikings headquarters on Tuesday for his second formal interview.

With Poles and Adofo-Mensah, who are both Black, filling vacancies this cycle there are now seven minority general managers in the NFL. The other five are Andrew Berry (Cleveland), Jerry Fontenot (Atlanta), Chris Grier (Miami), Brad Holmes (Detroit) and Martin Mayhew (Washington).

As part of the NFL’s reward system for teams developing minority coaches and front-office personnel, the Browns will receive compensatory third-round draft picks in each of the next two years for losing Adofo-Mensah. The league adopted that rule in 2020.

The 40-year-old Adofo-Mensah has an economics degrees from both Princeton, where he was a junior varsity basketball player, and Stanford. He is a native of New Jersey, just like Vikings owners Zygi Wilf and Mark Wilf.

Adofo