Kwesi Adofo-Mensah is coming back home to the 49ers.
The former Vikings general manager is returning to the Bay Area in an executive personnel role with the 49ers. John Lynch, the club’s general manager and president of football operations, revealed Adofo-Mensah’s reunion with the 49ers during a chat with local reporters at the NFL scouting combine.
“We brought Kwesi back in the fold, and we’re really excited,” Lynch said.
The Vikings fired Adofo-Mensah last month after he spent four years as their general manager. While the move wasn’t necessarily a big surprise in Minnesota, where talk of his shaky status had been brewing for some time, the timing of his dismissal caught many within the NFL off guard.
One of the first calls Adofo-Mensah made after getting fired was to Lynch, for whom he worked from 2013 to 2019 in the club’s football research and development department. Lynch said he was humbled that Adofo-Mensah reached out to him so quickly, and used the call to plant the seed for a return.
“Just kind of as a throwaway, ‘Kwesi, we always loved having you, so just know you got a place with us,’” Lynch said.
That got the ball rolling.
“And that developed into more substantive talks,” said Lynch. “And we’re bringing him back in kind of a personnel executive role that, after the draft, I think we hope to give more finality to.”
After working for the 49ers, Adofo-Mensah moved on to the Browns as their vice president of football operations for two seasons. That led him to the Vikings in 2022 as their general manager.
Adofo-Mensah’s decision to draft Michigan quarterback J.J. McCarthy in 2024, then choosing him over Sam Darnold, who led the Vikings to a 14-3 record that season, paved the way for his dismissal. McCarthy struggled in 2025 with both performance and staying healthy, while Darnold, the quarterback Adofo-Mensah let leave in free agency, led the Seahawks to a Super Bowl championship.
He will get a chance to re-establish himself in San Francisco.
“I think he’s expanded a lot since we last worked with him,” Lynch said. “But I’ve always, first of all, just loved the person, known Kwesi for a long time, and then as an organization we just valued. He’s just really smart. He looks at things in different ways, and we like that. I think it only makes you better.