As New York Giants fans, we tend to spend much of our time sizing our team up against their NFC East division rivals, or against Super Bowl contenders that we hope our team will become some day, rather
than some arbitrary team from one of the other NFL divisions. In the past few years, though, I’ve written a few Big Blue View pieces about one of those arbitrary teams, the Minnesota Vikings, because they have been traveling a similar road to the Giants and it’s been useful to compare the similarities and differences in their rebuild philosophies and the results they achieved.
After disappointing 2021 seasons, both teams cleaned house in the front office, firing both their head coach and general manager. The Giants’ purge was expected after a 4-13 finish, their fifth consecutive losing season, and an embarrassing product on the field in their final two games and at the podium after. The Vikings’ was more of a surprise. They’d gone only 8-9 and had reached the Divisional Round of the playoffs only two years earlier. Fast forward to 2026, and both teams have made changes at the top again. Once again, the Giants’ was expected, since they finished 4-13, coming off 6-11 and 3-14 the previous two seasons. Once again, the Vikings’ was more of a surprise, coming off a 9-8 season following a 14-3 playoff season the year before. So describing both teams as “struggling” glosses over the fact that the Vikings have been struggling to become a true Super Bowl contender while the Giants are just struggling to achieve respectability first.
Still, it’s interesting to compare the two teams, because their ownerships diagnosed the problem in two different ways. Neither team cleaned house this time. Instead, the Giants decided that head coach Brian Daboll was the problem and not general manager Joe Schoen, while the Vikings decided GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah was the problem and not HC Kevin O’Connell. Let’s compare the two teams.
Giants fans don’t need me to lecture them about Schoen, but in case you haven’t followed it, the Vikings’ dismissal of Adofo-Mensah was a bit of a shock – not because it happened, but because the Vikings waited so long to do it, jeopardizing their offseason strategy. There’s a great article about how it came to pass in The Athletic by Alec Lewis and Dianna Russini. Adofo-Mensah was an unconventional hire, with a football background anchored in analytics and no experience in scouting players. One thing that stood out in the article is that only four of Adofo-Mensah’s draft picks in four years are currently starters for the Vikings. I was shocked by that, so I went to Ourlads to verify. Here’s their current depth chart for the Vikings (the numbers after each name indicate the year/round if drafted by the Vikings):
Adofo-Mensah has significantly strengthened the Vikings’ offense with WRs Jordan Addison and Jalen Nailor. The latter, a Round 6 pick, was a nice find. Guard Donovan Jackson started every game as a rookie; his performance was acceptable but it’s probably fair to say that the jury is still out on whether he’ll be the long-term answer at that position. The fourth Adofo-Mensah starting draftee, of course, is J.J. McCarthy. More on him later.
Now let’s look at the defense:
Woof. Not a single Vikings defensive starter was acquired through the draft by Adofo-Mensah. That said, the Vikings’ defense was no worse than middling this past season. That’s in part because Adofo-Mensah signed some very good unrestricted free agents (indicated by a “U” after the name), notably edge defenders Jonathan Greenard and Andrew Van Ginkel, and to a lesser extent solid cornerbacks Isaiah Rodgers and Byron Murphy. Perhaps the defining moment of Adofo-Mensah’s Vikings career was his trade-down in his first draft from No. 12 to No. 32 with Detroit. With the No. 32 pick Adofo-Mensah took safety Lewis Cine. Cine only played in 11 games in 3 years, never started a game, and is now out of the league. In fairness, Cine was drafted about where he was projected to go pre-draft, but by trading down Adofo-Mensah left safety Kyle Hamilton (who went No. 14) on the board.
Has Schoen done better? Let’s take a look, first on offense:
Six of the Giants’ offensive starters are Schoen draftees: Malik Nabers, Wan’Dale Robinson, John Michael Schmitz, Theo Johnson, Jaxson Dart, and Cam Skattebo. Four of those at least are potentially very good to elite NFL players. There are also three Schoen unrestricted free agent signings on the list, all of them on the offensive line: Jon Runyan Jr., Greg Van Roten, and Jermaine Eluemunor, all of whom played at least adequately last year; Eluemunor played well.
Now the defense:
Five Schoen draftees are currently starters on the defense. So that makes 11 Schoen draftees in total starting, compared to four for Adofo-Mensah. Viewed that way, it make sense that Adofo-Mensah got the boot and Schoen did not. Unfortunately, of those five on defense, only Abdul Carter, Micah McFadden, and Cor’Dale Flott can be considered successful draft picks at the moment. Dru Phillips and Tyler Nubin looked that way as rookies but both, especially Nubin, declined as sophomores. Schoen’s unrestricted free agent signings on defense have also been notably less successful than Adofo-Mensah’s: Bobby Okereke (at least after his first year as a Giant), Paulson Adebo, and Jevon Holland. The latter two pale in comparison to their predecessors whom Schoen did not re-sign. Xavier McKinney’s leaving may have been inevitable given the size of the contract he got from Green Bay, but Julian Love left for Seattle for as much money as Schoen originally offered but then rescinded.
Each GM has made one trade that worked out very well: Tight end T.J. Hockenson for Adofo-Mensah, and edge defender Brian Burns for Schoen.
So is it obvious that one should have been fired and the other not?
The story for Adofo-Mensah apparently goes beyond that according to The Athletic article. Sticking to the roster construction side of things, assistant coaches started scouting college players more themselves rather than relying on the personnel department and tended to favor free agents who could contribute immediately. I’m not aware of any such schism within the Giants organization.
That leaves the coaching side of things. Daboll and McConnell were hired in the same off-season. Surprisingly, the Giants never interviewed McConnell and the Vikings never interviewed Daboll for their head coaching positions. Both head coaches pushed all the right buttons in their first seasons. Because Daboll’s fortunes spiraled downward after his first season at the helm, he gets too little respect for that first season. Yes, the Giants had an easy schedule, but that team had Richie James as its leading receiver and beat Aaron Rodgers, Lamar Jackson and Trevor Lawrence in consecutive weeks and then went on the road and beat the Vikings in a playoff game.
McConnell also had a golden first season as Vikings head coach. His team went 13-4 in the regular season and beat Josh Allen’s Bills in Buffalo. Then the Giants came along and exposed Minnesota’s defense and ended their season. This is where the two teams’ paths began to diverge, for several reasons.
After that 2022 season McConnell dismissed defensive coordinator Ed Donatell and hired Brian Flores to replace him. Flores improved the Vikings’ defense from 28th in the NFL to 13th in 2023, and then to 5th in 2024 and 3rd in 2025. Still, the Vikings, like the Giants, regressed in 2023, dropping to 7-10 in 2024. Adofo-Mensah replaced Kirk Cousins at quarterback with two moves. He signed Sam Darnold as a free agent and moved up from No. 11 to No. 10 to draft J.J. McCarthy. McCarthy was injured in training camp and lost his rookie season, but Darnold had what at the time was the best season of his career, leading the Vikings to a 14-3 record. Meanwhile Joe Schoen drafted no quarterback in 2024. He depended on Daniel Jones to return to his 2022 form and had no real alternative to him on the roster. When Jones failed to rebound, he was released, and with no starting-caliber QB on the roster the Giants limped to 3-14. Adofo-Mensah, already with Darnold and McCarthy on the roster, signed Jones as a free agent for the second half of the season, giving the Vikings three options for the future.
At this point the scorecard was:
- Adofo-Mensah: Darnold, Jones, McCarthy
- Schoen: Drew Lock, Tommy DeVito
If you had to bet which GM’s shelf life was about to expire, you’d have to say Schoen’s.
Then 2025 happened. Darnold had collapsed in the Vikings’ final regular season game against Detroit and again the following week in the playoffs against the Rams. Minnesota decided to let Darnold walk. Per The Athletic:
The Vikings declined to re-sign Darnold, who loved Minnesota. Even at the time, many within the organization believed he was an ideal fit for O’Connell’s complex, vertical passing-based system. One league source said he believed there was a time at which Darnold was open to staying in Minnesota for less money, but the organization ultimately weighed Darnold’s value against its investment in J.J. McCarthy, whom the Vikings had selected in the first round of the 2024 draft.
Was that Adofo-Mensah’s doing? Did O’Connell sign on to that? The article doesn’t say. The Vikings felt that in Jones, they had insurance against any snags in McCarthy’s development. Jones had other ideas, though. He signed with Indianapolis, seeing a clearer path to starting than if he remained in Minnesota – and he was right. Rather than sign a veteran such as Aaron Rodgers, who had expressed interest, the Vikings went with lower-tier backups, more like the Giants’ 2024 approach. Meanwhile Darnold balled out in Seattle this season…including in the playoffs, this time. Now he will be starting in the Super Bowl.
Why couldn’t McConnell get that out of Darnold? And why hasn’t he been able to get that out of McCarthy except for a few games in mid-season? On the other hand, why was McCarthy the Vikings’ pick at No. 10 rather than Bo Nix, who went at No. 12 and almost got Denver to the Super Bowl this year? Was Nix the better choice all along? Is Sean Payton a better mentor than Kevin McConnell? Either way, the Vikings now face an uncertain 2026.
Meanwhile, in New Jersey, Schoen and Daboll were pretty clearly working together during the 2025 draft. The sense from the clips that have surfaced is that Jaxson Dart was Daboll’s guy, not Schoen’s, and that Schoen made the trade-up to give him the QB he wanted. Say what you want about Daboll, he seems to have been right. And say what you want about Schoen, he got the deal done.
Beyond that, though, Schoen got Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston as insurance against the pace of Dart’s development. Wilson turned out to be a disappointment except for the Dallas game but Winston is a starting-caliber QB. The Giants will need to find a developmental QB3 this off-season, but otherwise they are in great shape at quarterback. The Vikings are in limbo, not knowing what they do or do not have at the position, and now without a GM to find one.
So why did the Vikings go 9-8 in 2025 while the Giants went 4-13? It comes back to Minnesota’s hiring of Flores to run the defense. Perhaps Daboll’s biggest failing as Giants head coach was his mishandling of the Wink Martindale situation, which led to him having to settle for Shane Bowen as his defensive coordinator the past two seasons. Schoen did him no favors with some of the defensive players he has acquired, but it’s possible the Giants’ would have equaled the Vikings’ record this year with a more aggressive defensive style.
Ultimately, it was that, along with Daboll’s apparent inability to run a tight ship, that cost him his job. I’m pretty confident that John Harbaugh will run a tight ship, and I expect Dennard Wilson to call a more aggressive defense than Shane Bowen did. I also hope that Schoen will find some better pieces to add on defense for Wilson to work with. Will Schoen and Harbaugh have a close working relationship the way he and Daboll seemed to have, even though it is clear that Harbaugh will be calling the shots?
That leaves offensive coordinator. It’s tough to have it drag out this long. Klint Kubiak seems to have done with Darnold what McConnell was not fully able to do, although in fairness, Darnold played really well under McConnell until his final two games as a Viking. The Giants need an offensive coordinator who can do for Dart what Kubiak has done for Darnold – not just making him a better quarterback, but giving him an offense that best suits his talents. Whether the Giants become the 2024 Vikings, or the 2025 Vikings, or the 2025 Seahawks may depend on it.
