With new general manager Nolan Teasley now officially in the fold, the Minnesota Vikings are continuing to shake up their front office, as they have named two new assistant general managers to serve as Teasley’s right-hand men. Or his left and right-hand men. . .having two right hands would be kind of weird, one would think.
One of those two men already has a relationship with Teasley, that being Trent Kirchner, whom Teasley worked with in Seattle. Kirchner, who is regarded as one of the top talent
evaluators in the National Football League, is going into his 28th season in the NFL, having spent the last seventeen seasons with the Seahawks. He spent the past seven seasons as Seattle’s Vice President of Player Personnel and spent the five seasons prior to that as their co-Director of Player Personnel. He has also served as the team’s Pro Personnel Director.
Kirchner had been with the Seahawks since 2010, but is now making his way to Minnesota, a place that he knows well. . .he’s a native of Minnesota and graduated from St. John’s University in Collegeville, so he’s bringing some of that “one of us” energy that I know we all love so very much.
Also joining the Vikings as an assistant GM is Andrew Healy. Healy comes to the Vikings from the Cleveland Browns, where his title was Vice President of Research and Strategy. According to his bio at Sloan Sports, that means he “led the integration of data and advanced insights into all parts of football operations.” He started with the Browns in 2016, and prior to that, he worked with Football Outsiders. So it sounds like he’s more of a numbers/analytics sort of guy. People may bristle at that a bit, given that’s the sort of background that former GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah came from, but Healy is in a more secondary role here, and in today’s NFL you’re certainly not going to get away from analytics entirely, so I don’t think there’s any reason to be down on this or anything.
It’s good to see that Teasley is starting to get comfortable and starting to get “his guys” installed in the front office in Minnesota. We might not see the full impact of hires like these for a while, but hopefully, when we do see the impact, it will be a significant one.
