At his introductory news conference Thursday morning, Vikings General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah shared glimpses of who he is, where he comes from and how he plans to implement his ideas and his personality with a new franchise.
Here are excerpts from his opening remarks and his answers to questions. You can watch the whole news conference here.
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"I'm the new person in this culture so I want to make sure that I learn what it is to its full detail. That starts with having conversations with players. Right after you guys let me go, I'm going to start calling them and really learning about what makes them proud to be a Minnesota Viking."
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"A lot of things that happen on Wall Street happen in the NFL. There's a market. There's players. There's prices. A lot of those things aren't any different. What you learn is the emotional, just stability to leave at the end of the day when it didn't go well and go say hi to your friends and be a normal person and show up the next day and try and get better."
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"I was a little guy in high school. I got cut from the basketball team my sophomore year, and when you're 15 everything throws you in a spin thinking, It's the worst thing that ever happened to you in your life. I struggled for a year there."
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"I used to have a picture of [former 49ers coach] Bill Walsh above my desk in case I thought I was figuring out the world, and I had to humble myself and I'd look at him."
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"I always say a coach that I would work with, I would work for. If that makes sense? It's somebody that I would want to partner with."
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"Alignment doesn't mean having the same mind or thinking the same but just general core beliefs, ways of solving problems, a constructive attitude towards mistakes. Those things really matter. And then, I would say the other key thing is suppression of ego. I think a lot of times, what gets in the way of the collective is people's individual goals or needs for validation. I think if you can avoid those at a high level, you can really get everybody going in the same direction, and that's what I hope to have here."
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"I was at Stanford to become an econ professor. I was going to wear a tweed jacket, glasses, and teach students."