Folks Are Now Mad at Vikings GM for Bizarre Reason
For some NFL fans (and even Minnesota Vikings loyalists), there’s always something to be mad about.
Folks Are Now Mad at Vikings GM for Bizarre Reason
The latest involves general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and an excerpt lifted from a book detailing the young executive’s scouting process.
Out of nowhere on Tuesday, an aggregator account on the X app, MLFootball, tweeted, “NEWS: Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah uses PFF to help select which players he wants on his team.”
The tweet then used a quote from a book by Matthew Coller titled Football Is a Numbers Game, attributed to Adofo-Mensah, “I use Pro Football Focus to teach myself things that frankly, I didn’t know. PFF really allows somebody to go deep and study that for themselves.”
Here’s the tweet from MLFootball:
The book was released last year, so why the Adofo-Mensah tweet became breaking news right before the Super Bowl is unclear. Then, because many NFL fans believe PFF is just a batch of algorithm-based grades assigned to a player, the tweet was used to criticize Adofo-Mensah, implying his unfamiliarity with the ins and outs of the sport.
In reality, PFF is used by every NFL team and is leaps and bounds more than just high school-like grades attached to players.
These are some of the naysaying tweets:
Inexplicably, those who took the tweet and ran with it to indict Adofo-Mensah failed to recognize any context whatsoever. They seemed to want to believe that PFF was his end-all Bible for decision-making or that he was incapable of watching film or using other tools for analysis. Why one would choose to believe that is beyond comprehension.
Meanwhile, the Vikings and 31 NFL teams employ scouts to evaluate players and inform Adofo-Mensah or another general manager of their findings. Somewhere along the line on Tuesday, folks talked themselves into thinking Adofo-Mensah drafts alone in a quiet room sans input from any scouting or coaching personnel.
Skewering the Vikings general manager for implementing PFF into his process would be akin to lambasting the shipping industry for using GPS.
PFF describes its business model on its website, “PFF’s agency partners help their clients find their market value through priming teams based on their past performance, predicting future performance, and valuing the position-specific market. The mission of PFF has been to innovate in the football industry, and our tools have helped empower agencies with the same data that all 32 NFL teams are utilizing.”
“Trent Williams’ record-setting 2021 contract featured PFF’s new Wins Above Replacement (NFL) metric, which is specific to PFF and is now a common currency used by many NFL teams. PFF has helped reset FOUR different position markets since 2021,” PFF adds on its website.
The newsworthy nature of the MLFootball tweet would make more sense if it said something to the effect, “Vikings general manager refuses to use PFF for football analysis.” Every professional football team utilizes PFF, and the Vikings are no different.
But this is The Digital Age, and for some reason, football fans constantly find ways to be outraged. It’s mind-boggling.
Dustin Baker is a political scientist who graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2007. Subscribe to his daily YouTube Channel, VikesNow. He hosts a podcast with Bryant McKinnie, which airs every Wednesday with Raun Sawh and Sal Spice. His Vikings obsession dates back to 1996. Listed guilty pleasures: Peanut Butter Ice Cream, ‘The Sopranos,’ Basset Hounds, and The Doors (the band).
All statistics provided by Pro Football Reference / Stathead; all contractual information provided by OverTheCap.com.
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