The search for the next General Manager for the Minnesota Vikings is moving along, and with the first round of interviews in the books, the team has reportedly narrowed their list down to a final five candidates.
According to Jonathan Jones of CBS Sports, the five candidates who are being called back for second, in-person interviews is as follows:
- Current interim GM Rob Brzezinski
- Denver Broncos Assistant GM Reed Burckhardt
- Buffalo Bills Assistant GM Terrance Gray
- Los Angeles Rams Assistant GM John McKay
- Seattle Seahawks Assistant GM Nolan Teasley
We know about Brzezinski, who has been with the Vikings since 1999 in various role and stepped into the interim GM spot after the Vikings fired Kwesi Adofo-Mensah
earlier this offseason. Here’s a quick dossier on the other four candidates.
Burckhardt spent 13 years with the Vikings in various positions in the team’s scouting department, including as the team’s director of pro scouting. He departed for Denver a year after George Paton left Minnesota to become the Broncos’ GM, and spent his first three seasons with Denver as their director of player personnel before getting a promotion to assistant general manager this past season.
Gray also spent significant time with the Vikings, working for the team as a college scout from 2006 to 2016 before departing for Buffalo to become their director of college scouting. He worked his way up the ladder in Buffalo, eventually becoming the team’s director of player personnel and, like Burckhardt in Denver, was promoted to the role of assistant general manager in 2025.
McKay has been with the Rams since 2016, which gives him a direct connection to Kevin O’Connell. He began his career with the Rams as a scouting assistant and worked his way up. The 2025 season was also his first year as his team’s assistant general manager, and he spent the four seasons before that as the Rams’ director of pro personnel. He has also been the Rams’ assistant director of pro scouting.
Teasley has actually been an assistant general manager for multiple years, as 2025 was his fourth season with the Seahawks in that capacity. Before that, he spent five seasons as the Seahawks’ director of pro personnel. He has been with the Seahawks for 14 years.
I’m not going to pretend that I know anything more about any of these guys than what I’ve just listed above because. . .well, because I don’t. The outside candidates all come from teams that have done quite a bit of winning recently, so if the Vikings do decide to go in that direction and not just put Brzezinski in the big chair, hopefully they can bring some of that with them to the Twin Cities.
No word on any sort of timeline for when a final decision will be made, but I can’t imagine that it will be too much longer before the Vikings will be naming a new general manager.
