Kirk Cousins Contract Extension for Competitive…

EAGAN, Minn. — As the Vikings entered the 2022 offseason, many felt Minnesota had two ways to approach the coming months.

The Vikings could retain almost all of their big-name pieces from recent seasons and run it all back, hoping that wins in the margins elsewhere would produce more success than the roughly eight wins per season in each of the past four years.

Or, the Vikings could be sellers, trading off those notable names with an eye on the future, even while knowing the short-term outlook might be altered a bit.

But that’s not the way Kwesi Adofo-Mensah viewed things when he took over as Minnesota’s general manager.

“I think when people look at teams, they sometimes do it in a very binary way,” Adofo-Mensah said. “And 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,” Adofo-Mensah added. “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.”

Adofo-Mensah’s words are a common theme among all GMs across the league, whether it be at the combine or during the draft.

And as Adofo-Mensah tries to keep an eye on both the short- and long-term solutions, his first major move this offseason — a one-year extension for Kirk Cousins — was geared toward more immediate success.