People are noticing that Kwesi Adofo-Mensah said something we already knew

He’s only been the General Manager of the Minnesota Vikings for about six months, but Kwesi Adofo-Mensah has already faced some criticism from the fan base. He seems to be getting more of it from something he said in a feature with USA Today last week.

Here’s the quote from the article written by Jori Epstein:

“I’ll be frank,” he told USA TODAY Sports during a sit-down at his office conference table. “The one asset where you get nervous about not burning it down is quarterback.”

He aims not to take a shot at a quarterback coming off a 4,221-yard, 33-touchdown-to-seven-interception season and believes, indeed, that he has “a good quarterback.” But “we don’t have Tom Brady,” Adofo-Mensah acknowledges, and “we don’t have Pat(rick) Mahomes,” which requires him to ask: Is the Vikings quarterback perennially sufficient?

Apparently Adofo-Mensah saying that Kirk Cousins isn’t as good as Tom Brady or Patrick Mahomes is proof of. . .something. I have no idea what that something is, and most of the people that are complaining about this probably don’t, either, but by God it’s gotta be something.

I can only imagine the fecal matter storm that would have commenced had Adofo-Mensah put Cousins on the same level as Brady and Mahomes.

We know that Cousins is a good quarterback. At times he’s a very good quarterback. He’s probably top ten-ish, depending on what happens on a given Sunday. But he’s not on the level of Mahomes or Brady or Aaron Rodgers (though it seems like he outplays Rodgers head-to-head at least once a year). He’s just a pretty good quarterback most of the time.

We’ve been over this a bunch of times, but the Vikings really didn’t have a lot of options on what to do with Cousins’ deal if the team wanted to remain competitive. Adofo-Mensah and new head coach Kevin O’Connell clearly think the Vikings have what it takes to be a good football team this year, so they gave Cousins an extension so that they could make a decision in the near future depending on how things go. He’s now under contract through the 2023 season, after which the Vikings will have the ability to move on without destroying their salary cap.

I’m excited for the Kwesi Adofo-Mensah/Kevin O’Connell era in Minnesota. I would have been excited regardless of who the team was going to throw out there at quarterback. Having Cousins out there makes me feel a bit better about their prospects for this season. But the fact that the brass didn’t put Kirk Cousins on the same plane as a couple of future Hall of Famers doesn’t mean that they don’t like him and don’t think they can’t win with him.

Adofo-Mensah was honest and straightforward in his assessment. After a few years of what we dubbed here as “Rickspeak,” perhaps people could appreciate that a little bit.