I don’t know what you’re implying here? KAM spent nearly a decade in two good FOs before landing the Vikings GM role:
>San Francisco 49ers (2013–2016)
Manager of football research & development
>San Francisco 49ers (2017–2019)
Director of football research & development
>Cleveland Browns (2020–2021)
Vice president of football operations
>Minnesota Vikings (2022–present)
General manager
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwesi_Adofo-Mensah
KAM was part of the 49ers and Browns roster building and those two are good rosters. Kwesi was clearly good at what he did there. He also had two degrees from Princeton and Stanford, so yeah, he’s smart as fuck on top of being talented in football operations. He’s spent more time in the NFL than Wall Street so I’m not sure why it’s still brought up?
I think maybe that defense at Georgia hid he was just a run free safety and didn't really need to digest much playbook in college. Now he's lost and can't cover his flaws. Swap postions with him and Najee Thompson now that he's switched from gunner to safety.
Tbf almost nobody on that Georgia defense turned out to be good which is like.... super odd. I really dont understand how none of them are superstars if they were collectively wrecking teams.
It seems like lots of times defense has become more about not having weak links than having dominant super stars. It reminds me of some of the Patriot defenses that were really good.
If you have a deep defense, everyone plays fast and for each other, and everyone believes then yeah you can wreck teams in college even if you don't have any NFL star caliber players.
I also think that Cine's injury really didn't help. Misses rookie season, still feeling it sophomore, then having to like get good and beat out other players despite not playing much meaningful football in years.
But yeah all in all, simply an awful pick and you got to wonder what they were seeing in the guy other than athletic scores and being a good dude. Like how was there not evidence of this stuff in the tape?
It's weird though, pre-draft he was touted as having a very high football IQ, helping the new guys adjust to the playbook, and being considered an on-field leader.
Not sure what happened outside of the injury, but maybe the scouts were just wrong?
Idk what the coaches are seeing but he had legit football skills at Georgia. I watched a lot of their games just by being bored and craving football when their games were on, and he looked like a legit safety prospect. However, Georgia doesn't necessarily ask their safeties to do a lot, nor do they have the type of alignments or pre-snap motion that a Flores coached defense does.
If you look at the safties to make the NFL or be NFL prospects from the current Georgia regime, they tend to be limited. They're either zone coverage guys or run support guys. There isn't a ton of dynamic ability. The most you'll get is a guy who can play nickel. In a Dontatell style defense where the safeties play very traditionally, he might still be able to have a shot at carving out a role, but if the rumors of him not being able to grasp Flores' defense is true, his potential is gonna be limited regardless.
TLDR; he has football skills, but his potential is limited by fit if he can't grasp a system that does a lot of disguising and role variation.
Thanks for the insight on that. I admittedly had no idea who he was when he played at Georgia and never watched any of their games paying attention to him.
I keep seeing this, but I don't see any reason to believe he's changed his philosophy at all. The talent distribution in 2024 was nothing like the talent distribution in 2022, and the situation on our team was very different in 2024 than it was in 2022.
We needed a QB, so it made sense to trade up to guarantee we got the one we wanted. A top guy on our board that our DC really wanted fell within striking distance, so we went out and got him. A big part of the reason why we were willing to trade back so far in 2022 was because there wasn't anyone like that in that draft, and there was lots of guys who sort of fit what a Fangio defense would be looking for. So it made sense to load up on those guys to play the odds.
Yea, people are jumping to this conclusion just because the last two drafts he hasn't done what he did previously, but they were also entirely different situations as we approached the draft.
We needed more role players in the 2022 draft than anything, and while the argument could be said that we also needed that in 2023, the draft fell in a way where trading back out of the first was far less than ideal given who was available.
If we end up in another situation where we need depth over stars, Kwesi may make similar moves in those drafts. However, I do think that part of the dynamic that led to choosing to trade back and grab Cine is one that won't be present in the future. Kwesi's scouting department is fully fleshed-out now and he is no longer operating with a bit of a blind spot in that regard and he may not be as prone to selecting guys who are more tailored to the current DC's scheme. However, we are seeing him do exactly that with Flores-type guys, so maybe I'm giving him a bit too much credit there.
However, Flores is much more established as a DC and really has earned that kind of consideration over Donatell. Here's hoping that Flores stays on with us for the long haul.
Makes sense that he moved down a lot when he picked Cine, his scout team hadn't been implemented yet. So having more chances to pick, if he was unsure of the scouting reports, made a lot more sense - more picks, more chances to hit.
I also remember him saying in a later press release that he wanted to drop out of the first to get more picks but didn't because he didn't want the fans to have no picks in the first on his first ever draft. Which is why he dropped to 32 and picked BPA according to his scouting reports.
But you wouldn't want a top 5 safety in the league (my guess) going forward? It's not being worried about our safety room. It's the fact that we traded back for a player that is about to get cut over just taking a very very good player.
Yeah and the Eagles drafted Reagor over Jefferson. The Bears drafted Trubisky over Mahomes. The draft is a crap shoot. Some times things work out sometimes they don't.
thats fair, but thankfully thru other shrewd moves (keeping harry while reducing salary, signing metellus before he broke out), we have imo a high quality safety room (top 5-8) despite missing. So like, at least it didn't have too much detriment. The booth pick on the other hand lmao
Saying "It's not as bad of an outcome because we have two very good safeties" is not the same as "We're in better shape with these guys than if we had taken Hamilton"
We should have never drafted a safety in the first place. Hamilton/ Cine, doesn’t matter.
How about a true NT in Jordan Davis? How about an all-pro corner in McDuffie? Or a DE like Jermaine Johnson, Karlaftis, Mafe, etc. or a 3T with some juice like Wyatt. Tyler Smith was an OL I loved, and he’s a top 10 guard.
These weren't really hindsight picks.
Something like 60+% of mock drafts had us picking McDuffie. Hamilton was a really obvious pick but no one had him projected to fall for us. We had a huge hole at DT/NT and a lot of folks (including myself) were pounding the table for Davis.
If we had picked Hamilton or Davis the general consensus would have been extremely positive on draft night AND in hindsight it would have been the right move. McDuffie would also have been a great pick though from what I remember in the threads at the time the consensus seemed to be that he would have been a reach at our pick and so many wanted to trade down. I know that I personally wanted Davis, McDuffie (would have been good) or Williams (so far a bad call).
I still disagree on that first point.
We had a 33 year old Harrison Smith and two no-name 4th round and later safeties that had about 250 snaps between them when that draft happened. KOC and Kwesi did not have a ton of tape on those two guys, and it was their first draft.
We can certainly argue about positional value and whether or not a high pick like that should have been spent on a Safety, but it was *absolutely* a need at that point. We did not have the benefit of hindsight with how Bynum and Metellus turned out.
I 100% disagree.
Just because there isn’t a ton of game tape, doesn’t mean coaches don’t know how good a guy is. Remember Zim saying I see Mond every day?
If KOC/KAM didn’t sit down and have conversations with position coaches about the state of the roster etc., then they weren’t doing their job. And if any positional coach said we should use a first round pick on a safety, then they should have been relieved of their job.
Bynum looked fantastic when he had a chance to start, and Smith was still looking good and his contract made moving on prohibitive. So even if you want to argue that S was a need, it wasn’t anywhere near our biggest need. I would have put it as like 4th-5th behind CB, IOL, IDL, DE, and most of the media/ draft community had a similar opinion.
CB we had a what, 36(?) year old P2 on the last year of his deal, we had Chandon fucking Sullivan, and Dantzler who had the yips. At that point in ‘22, the only CBs on the roster for the following year was like Harrison Hand and maybe one other guy? At DE we had two aging stars coming off season ending injuries, and no quality young talent. On the IOL we had Oli Udoh and Bradbury who both could be upgraded from. IDL lacked a true nose tackle or any pass rush threat.
The draft in ‘22 was GM malpractice and it all started with the completely idiotic move of taking a 1st round safety.
>Just because there isn’t a ton of game tape, doesn’t mean coaches don’t know how good a guy is. Remember Zim saying I see Mond every day?
Yea, and that's a situation of "He's not good enough yet" not "He'll never be good enough" even if that was the ultimate outcome.
However with Metellus and Bynum, it could have been a situation of "These guys showed some flashes, but we're not sure if they can be starters". You're basing this entirely off the assumption that the position coaches were ready to say "These dudes are the future of the safety position" when often times DB's come along slower than other defensive positions.
Shit, even if we take the assumption that the position coaches were ready to say "Bynum is good enough to start" we're still sitting there with a 33 year old Harrison Smith on the other side of Bynum, so we STILL had a need for Safety.
>So even if you want to argue that S was a need, it wasn’t anywhere near our biggest need.
I can agree with that.
Which then just boils down to misuse of resources. We need a starter in a couple years isn’t something you use a 1st round pick on, especially at a low value position. Maybe a QB or an elite prospect at a premiere position, sure. Safety? Nah.
Unless you KNOW you’re getting an instant All-Pro/ future HOF player, I don’t think a 1st round pick on safety is pretty much ever worth it.
There are average to good veteran safeties available every single year in free agency that can be had for cheap. Look at how many safeties signed for less than what Ezra Cleveland got paid this year, and Ezra was a barely serviceable guard.
Still, at the end of the day, does it matter? Not really. The 49ers whiff on Trey Lance doesn't really matter because they got Purdy. Why get mad at flops when it all worked out in the end?
You're acting like Kyle Hamilton was the only other option. We didn't have to go safety at all. We could have gotten Jordan David at DT, Tyler Linderbaum at C, or a couple CB that have turned out better than Cine or Booth so far. At the time I understood why he made the trade, but it was a gamble that we have definitely lost so far
No one was arguing at all. It's a discussion. Your counterpoint to him was that we aren't hurting for safeties. My counterpoint to you was that's true, but we could have gotten value at a different position. That's kind of how discussions work.
Booth still has a chance to be something, but he needs some gears to turn upstairs for that to happen. Never felt like Cine had anything other than raw talent. A lot of his interviews and stuff on the YouTube channel just had him coming across as all brawn.
How many interviews did you watch? Just the early ones where he was still nervous?
Because he does not come across as dumb or "all brawn" in interviews at all.
I mean you can think that, but I commented as much during his rookie season on some of the voyager videos. I was pretty hyped on Cine initially because I thought he was an athletic freak who would provide a harry type play style. I distinctly remember post injury during the voyager episodes losing faith on his retention. I think he could still be a good player in the right system, but Flores requires a lot from his players. Just listen to the likes of Metellus and Bynum talk. I’d argue Cine is probably more athletic than the 2.
I don't think it's that simple necessarily
Could also just be Flores doesn't like something about him
Look at LaVar Arrington and Joe Gibbs or Randy Moss and Childress. Or Childress and any wide receiver lol
Cine hasn't had enough time on the field during games or preseason to even make this statement.
Yes, his tackling does not look like it's as good as it was advertised pre-draft, but your talking about this in an absolute when really we only have like 4-5 examples of him to point to.
There's issues with him digesting the playbook, sure... But I wouldn't call him stupid.
Besides, that doesn't change the fact that we have no clue about the rest of his game because he hasn't earned playtime.
Happy for ABJ if he’s making progress. If him Blackmon, Jackson, Evans, or anyone else in the CB room takes a leap this year, our defense is gonna truly be scary.
I would take a 2028 7th round pick for Lewis Cine at this point.
So much football talent, so little football brains.
Is that his issue? I've only heard rumors about it. Sad if it's true. He seems like a nice kid.
Leber said he wasn't grasping Flores' defense fast enough that's why he got benched.
But he interned on Wall Street like our GM! Doesn't that mean they are both smart?!?!
I don’t know what you’re implying here? KAM spent nearly a decade in two good FOs before landing the Vikings GM role: >San Francisco 49ers (2013–2016) Manager of football research & development >San Francisco 49ers (2017–2019) Director of football research & development >Cleveland Browns (2020–2021) Vice president of football operations >Minnesota Vikings (2022–present) General manager https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwesi_Adofo-Mensah KAM was part of the 49ers and Browns roster building and those two are good rosters. Kwesi was clearly good at what he did there. He also had two degrees from Princeton and Stanford, so yeah, he’s smart as fuck on top of being talented in football operations. He’s spent more time in the NFL than Wall Street so I’m not sure why it’s still brought up?
Kwesi has a remarkable talent for failing upwards.
Does he have football talent or was he just super athletic?
I think maybe that defense at Georgia hid he was just a run free safety and didn't really need to digest much playbook in college. Now he's lost and can't cover his flaws. Swap postions with him and Najee Thompson now that he's switched from gunner to safety.
Tbf almost nobody on that Georgia defense turned out to be good which is like.... super odd. I really dont understand how none of them are superstars if they were collectively wrecking teams.
It seems like lots of times defense has become more about not having weak links than having dominant super stars. It reminds me of some of the Patriot defenses that were really good.
If you have a deep defense, everyone plays fast and for each other, and everyone believes then yeah you can wreck teams in college even if you don't have any NFL star caliber players. I also think that Cine's injury really didn't help. Misses rookie season, still feeling it sophomore, then having to like get good and beat out other players despite not playing much meaningful football in years. But yeah all in all, simply an awful pick and you got to wonder what they were seeing in the guy other than athletic scores and being a good dude. Like how was there not evidence of this stuff in the tape?
UGA’s line was dominant. Walker, Davis, Carter, and Wyatt just pummeled the other team’s o-line making it much easier for the rest of the D.
It's weird though, pre-draft he was touted as having a very high football IQ, helping the new guys adjust to the playbook, and being considered an on-field leader. Not sure what happened outside of the injury, but maybe the scouts were just wrong?
Idk what the coaches are seeing but he had legit football skills at Georgia. I watched a lot of their games just by being bored and craving football when their games were on, and he looked like a legit safety prospect. However, Georgia doesn't necessarily ask their safeties to do a lot, nor do they have the type of alignments or pre-snap motion that a Flores coached defense does. If you look at the safties to make the NFL or be NFL prospects from the current Georgia regime, they tend to be limited. They're either zone coverage guys or run support guys. There isn't a ton of dynamic ability. The most you'll get is a guy who can play nickel. In a Dontatell style defense where the safeties play very traditionally, he might still be able to have a shot at carving out a role, but if the rumors of him not being able to grasp Flores' defense is true, his potential is gonna be limited regardless. TLDR; he has football skills, but his potential is limited by fit if he can't grasp a system that does a lot of disguising and role variation.
Thanks for the insight on that. I admittedly had no idea who he was when he played at Georgia and never watched any of their games paying attention to him.
He was also drafted for a shell system. We have basically the opposite now
I guess the NFL just wasn't his cine I'll see myself out
[I Cine't what you did there ](https://imgur.com/gallery/AdlE6Gc)
John Cine
This Ain't A Cine, It's An Arms Race
Clearly not the Cine qua non of the defense….
Can’t believe we kept trading back to get him when we could’ve had Kyle Hamilton. That one stings.
Seems like Kwesi at least learned some things from that draft, given that this year, he had a different philosophy of quality over quantity.
I keep seeing this, but I don't see any reason to believe he's changed his philosophy at all. The talent distribution in 2024 was nothing like the talent distribution in 2022, and the situation on our team was very different in 2024 than it was in 2022. We needed a QB, so it made sense to trade up to guarantee we got the one we wanted. A top guy on our board that our DC really wanted fell within striking distance, so we went out and got him. A big part of the reason why we were willing to trade back so far in 2022 was because there wasn't anyone like that in that draft, and there was lots of guys who sort of fit what a Fangio defense would be looking for. So it made sense to load up on those guys to play the odds.
Yea, people are jumping to this conclusion just because the last two drafts he hasn't done what he did previously, but they were also entirely different situations as we approached the draft. We needed more role players in the 2022 draft than anything, and while the argument could be said that we also needed that in 2023, the draft fell in a way where trading back out of the first was far less than ideal given who was available. If we end up in another situation where we need depth over stars, Kwesi may make similar moves in those drafts. However, I do think that part of the dynamic that led to choosing to trade back and grab Cine is one that won't be present in the future. Kwesi's scouting department is fully fleshed-out now and he is no longer operating with a bit of a blind spot in that regard and he may not be as prone to selecting guys who are more tailored to the current DC's scheme. However, we are seeing him do exactly that with Flores-type guys, so maybe I'm giving him a bit too much credit there. However, Flores is much more established as a DC and really has earned that kind of consideration over Donatell. Here's hoping that Flores stays on with us for the long haul.
Makes sense that he moved down a lot when he picked Cine, his scout team hadn't been implemented yet. So having more chances to pick, if he was unsure of the scouting reports, made a lot more sense - more picks, more chances to hit. I also remember him saying in a later press release that he wanted to drop out of the first to get more picks but didn't because he didn't want the fans to have no picks in the first on his first ever draft. Which is why he dropped to 32 and picked BPA according to his scouting reports.
Listen, I get it, but it's not like we're hurting for safeties right now.
Harry doesn’t have much left in him and Hamilton is already one of the best safeties in the league.
But we still have Bynum and Metellus? Who are 25/26. So like, not really worried about our safety room at all.
But you wouldn't want a top 5 safety in the league (my guess) going forward? It's not being worried about our safety room. It's the fact that we traded back for a player that is about to get cut over just taking a very very good player.
Yeah and the Eagles drafted Reagor over Jefferson. The Bears drafted Trubisky over Mahomes. The draft is a crap shoot. Some times things work out sometimes they don't.
thats fair, but thankfully thru other shrewd moves (keeping harry while reducing salary, signing metellus before he broke out), we have imo a high quality safety room (top 5-8) despite missing. So like, at least it didn't have too much detriment. The booth pick on the other hand lmao
Saying "It's not as bad of an outcome because we have two very good safeties" is not the same as "We're in better shape with these guys than if we had taken Hamilton"
We should have never drafted a safety in the first place. Hamilton/ Cine, doesn’t matter. How about a true NT in Jordan Davis? How about an all-pro corner in McDuffie? Or a DE like Jermaine Johnson, Karlaftis, Mafe, etc. or a 3T with some juice like Wyatt. Tyler Smith was an OL I loved, and he’s a top 10 guard.
I definitely wanted McDuffie at CB.
"Why didnt we just draft the draft studs you guys what are we, stupid"
lol. Pick a name out of a hat at any position we actually needed and you would beat our 6th string safety.
These weren't really hindsight picks. Something like 60+% of mock drafts had us picking McDuffie. Hamilton was a really obvious pick but no one had him projected to fall for us. We had a huge hole at DT/NT and a lot of folks (including myself) were pounding the table for Davis. If we had picked Hamilton or Davis the general consensus would have been extremely positive on draft night AND in hindsight it would have been the right move. McDuffie would also have been a great pick though from what I remember in the threads at the time the consensus seemed to be that he would have been a reach at our pick and so many wanted to trade down. I know that I personally wanted Davis, McDuffie (would have been good) or Williams (so far a bad call).
I still disagree on that first point. We had a 33 year old Harrison Smith and two no-name 4th round and later safeties that had about 250 snaps between them when that draft happened. KOC and Kwesi did not have a ton of tape on those two guys, and it was their first draft. We can certainly argue about positional value and whether or not a high pick like that should have been spent on a Safety, but it was *absolutely* a need at that point. We did not have the benefit of hindsight with how Bynum and Metellus turned out.
I 100% disagree. Just because there isn’t a ton of game tape, doesn’t mean coaches don’t know how good a guy is. Remember Zim saying I see Mond every day? If KOC/KAM didn’t sit down and have conversations with position coaches about the state of the roster etc., then they weren’t doing their job. And if any positional coach said we should use a first round pick on a safety, then they should have been relieved of their job. Bynum looked fantastic when he had a chance to start, and Smith was still looking good and his contract made moving on prohibitive. So even if you want to argue that S was a need, it wasn’t anywhere near our biggest need. I would have put it as like 4th-5th behind CB, IOL, IDL, DE, and most of the media/ draft community had a similar opinion. CB we had a what, 36(?) year old P2 on the last year of his deal, we had Chandon fucking Sullivan, and Dantzler who had the yips. At that point in ‘22, the only CBs on the roster for the following year was like Harrison Hand and maybe one other guy? At DE we had two aging stars coming off season ending injuries, and no quality young talent. On the IOL we had Oli Udoh and Bradbury who both could be upgraded from. IDL lacked a true nose tackle or any pass rush threat. The draft in ‘22 was GM malpractice and it all started with the completely idiotic move of taking a 1st round safety.
>Just because there isn’t a ton of game tape, doesn’t mean coaches don’t know how good a guy is. Remember Zim saying I see Mond every day? Yea, and that's a situation of "He's not good enough yet" not "He'll never be good enough" even if that was the ultimate outcome. However with Metellus and Bynum, it could have been a situation of "These guys showed some flashes, but we're not sure if they can be starters". You're basing this entirely off the assumption that the position coaches were ready to say "These dudes are the future of the safety position" when often times DB's come along slower than other defensive positions. Shit, even if we take the assumption that the position coaches were ready to say "Bynum is good enough to start" we're still sitting there with a 33 year old Harrison Smith on the other side of Bynum, so we STILL had a need for Safety. >So even if you want to argue that S was a need, it wasn’t anywhere near our biggest need. I can agree with that.
Which then just boils down to misuse of resources. We need a starter in a couple years isn’t something you use a 1st round pick on, especially at a low value position. Maybe a QB or an elite prospect at a premiere position, sure. Safety? Nah. Unless you KNOW you’re getting an instant All-Pro/ future HOF player, I don’t think a 1st round pick on safety is pretty much ever worth it. There are average to good veteran safeties available every single year in free agency that can be had for cheap. Look at how many safeties signed for less than what Ezra Cleveland got paid this year, and Ezra was a barely serviceable guard.
Still, at the end of the day, does it matter? Not really. The 49ers whiff on Trey Lance doesn't really matter because they got Purdy. Why get mad at flops when it all worked out in the end?
You're acting like Kyle Hamilton was the only other option. We didn't have to go safety at all. We could have gotten Jordan David at DT, Tyler Linderbaum at C, or a couple CB that have turned out better than Cine or Booth so far. At the time I understood why he made the trade, but it was a gamble that we have definitely lost so far
No one was arguing that? What?
No one was arguing at all. It's a discussion. Your counterpoint to him was that we aren't hurting for safeties. My counterpoint to you was that's true, but we could have gotten value at a different position. That's kind of how discussions work.
Booth still has a chance to be something, but he needs some gears to turn upstairs for that to happen. Never felt like Cine had anything other than raw talent. A lot of his interviews and stuff on the YouTube channel just had him coming across as all brawn.
How many interviews did you watch? Just the early ones where he was still nervous? Because he does not come across as dumb or "all brawn" in interviews at all.
Yea this is a bullshit hindsight take. Dude seemed legit on tape and in person. Sometimes it just doesn't work out
I mean you can think that, but I commented as much during his rookie season on some of the voyager videos. I was pretty hyped on Cine initially because I thought he was an athletic freak who would provide a harry type play style. I distinctly remember post injury during the voyager episodes losing faith on his retention. I think he could still be a good player in the right system, but Flores requires a lot from his players. Just listen to the likes of Metellus and Bynum talk. I’d argue Cine is probably more athletic than the 2.
I don't think it's that simple necessarily Could also just be Flores doesn't like something about him Look at LaVar Arrington and Joe Gibbs or Randy Moss and Childress. Or Childress and any wide receiver lol
A safety has to tackle, cine could never be relied on, which is pretty sad as its fundamentals ( meaning you practice it everyday )
Cine hasn't had enough time on the field during games or preseason to even make this statement. Yes, his tackling does not look like it's as good as it was advertised pre-draft, but your talking about this in an absolute when really we only have like 4-5 examples of him to point to.
He doesn't have more time on the field because he's too stupid to learn the playbook
There's issues with him digesting the playbook, sure... But I wouldn't call him stupid. Besides, that doesn't change the fact that we have no clue about the rest of his game because he hasn't earned playtime.
I wish I could meme but with this and us “loving Theo Jackson” I think we’re officially OOPS!! ALL SAFETIES!
Happy for ABJ if he’s making progress. If him Blackmon, Jackson, Evans, or anyone else in the CB room takes a leap this year, our defense is gonna truly be scary.
[This makes my meme I posted last year even more relevant](https://www.reddit.com/r/minnesotavikings/s/wZMe03oyUF)