EAGAN, Minn. — Coming up short shouldn't prevent Minnesota from appreciating its 2024 season.

It brought 14 wins, including seven played at U.S. Bank Stadium, to a franchise projected to win half that many. It revitalized players' careers, strengthened others and showed the power of a positive culture.

It chiseled a course to an even stronger future.

Vikings leadership – General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and Head Coach Kevin O'Connell – met Thursday with members of the media to sign off on the 2024 season and look ahead to the 2025 journey.

"I think we've laid the foundation for a really competitive, sustained team, a lot of smart, tough guys who love football," Adofo-Mensah shared. "I think you can build and do a lot of great things with a group like that. Although, it didn't go where we wanted to go, and so you want to make sure at the same time you're appreciating what happened while really trying to study the feeling we have right now; why we're not continuing in the tournament.

"It's that go-between, the large sample of the success, but the small sample where it didn't go your way, and you want to make sure that you don't throw out the small sample, but you don't want to overweight it, you don't want to underweight it," he continued. "It's the exercise we'll undertake as a team, and that always starts with ultimate accountability, and that'll start with K.O. and I."

Adofo-Mensah said they'll keep grinding to get there. O'Connell doubled-down, essentially.

"We have not gotten to the place that we want to get to yet," O'Connell relayed. "We've done a lot of things to build that foundation, and now we must build upon that foundation to continue to do the things that it takes to win a world championship in the ultra-competitive league that we play in."

After each answered about 20 minutes of questions, Adofo-Mensah and O'Connell personally thanked attending reporters for their diligence and commitment to shining a light on Vikings players and their stories. Adofo-Mensah walked around the room and shook each person's hand. O'Connell would have, he said, if not for a bout of end-of-season flu.

Here are four other takeaways from the season-closing availability with Adofo-Mensah and O'Connell:

1. Feeling the sting

Expectations can shift, understandably, when the projected win total is passed in November.

"I can't say that I sat here and said, 'We're going to win 14 games.' I'm not going to lie to anybody and say that," Adofo-Mensah admitted, although he was confident in the team's playoff potential before the season began. "We liked the players we brought in. We thought we had a good chance with our QB room to get really good play out of that, however that shook out. We knew we had a connected group."

Resilience in 2022, winning an NFL record 11 one-score games, gave Adofo-Mensah an inkling of what could be achieved, especially after the 2024 group demonstrated perhaps even greater resilience.

The Vikings scratched out a nine-game winning streak after losing twice in a span of five days in late-October. Their acceptance of newcomers and buy-in to O'Connell's 1-0 mantra matter-of-factly reset expectations. That's partly why Adofo-Mensah has found it difficult to reflect on the season as a whole.

"I'm not there yet, but I will try to step back and just reflect on it in its totality and make sure that I appreciate it for what it is: 'Did we outperform, underperform expectations?'" Adofo-Mensah said. "And you have to do that by looking at a player level, what performances you've got, different things like that, and looking at the metrics we do, and just collaborate with our great group and figure that out. But it's hard to answer [if this was one of the best possible outcomes], just because you're still just so stung by not being in the tournament and playing football with a great group that you think deserved more."

O'Connell added in his opening remarks:

"I tell the players a lot, my second-least favorite day of the whole year is the day after our final game in a lot of ways, because as I go through the process of meeting with each player individually and each coach individually – that one year's team to the next is never going to be the same. And I was just so incredibly proud and grateful for all our players and coaches and the year we had. Did not end the way any of us envisioned. In fact, the finality of it all is probably the thing that stings the most because every player and coach in those meetings expressed just how nobody expected it to be over when it was."

2. Responsive additions

Adofo-Mensah butchered with good intentions a Mike Tyson quote. Then again, he nailed the gist of it.

"The season is this thing. It's this beautiful plan you have. You're going with expectations about what's supposed to happen, and then what did Mike Tyson say? You know, the Mike Tyson thing, you get punched in the face, and you've got to react, and you have got to figure stuff out," Adofo-Mensah said.

For what it's worth, Tyson's full quote was, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.

"Then, like a rat, they stop in fear and freeze."

Adofo-Mensah did the opposite when Minnesota's cornerbacks room was depleted due to tragedy and injury this summer. And he did the opposite, again, when one of the Vikings pillar players was hurt mid-season. Adofo-Mensah's reaction to unexpected circumstances helped the remarkable record.

He dished Thursday on the Vikings adjusting on the fly, nodding first to acquiring Cam Robinson just before the trade deadline and after Christian Darrisaw was lost for the season.

"There's not many Christian Darrisaw's walking around this Earth, we all know that. He's one of the best players in this league," Adofo-Mensah said. "So, we tried to get somebody to come in here and play good football for us and fit into what we were doing, and we were really excited with what Cam did for us.

"We knew from an asset standpoint of what it would cost, but also potentially what it could be on the backend and what that would net us," he added. "You're always asking those questions in terms of, 'OK, well, then what needs am I going to have in the future? How is that going to change my planning?' "

Robinson made 10 starts at left tackle and is one of more than 20 Vikings players with expiring deals. He may return the team a future compensatory draft pick depending on if he signs elsewhere in free agency.

Adofo-Mensah discussed the acquisitions of veteran cornerbacks Shaq Griffin (March 20) and Stephon Gilmore (Aug. 19), as well, and imparted how they were purposeful beyond their impact on game days.

Griffin, 29 years old, and Gilmore, 34, combined for three interceptions and 15 passes defensed.

Maybe more importantly, considering they're both impending free agents, is they served as mentors to a couple of budding, inexperienced cornerbacks.

"It wasn't just about the player, but it was also about who the young guys in that room get to learn from," Adofo-Mensah shared. "Now, Mekhi Blackmon, and then Dwight McGlothern gets to learn from [them] – talking about consummate professionals (Griffin and Gilmore) in a scheme that requires a pretty high intellect. It's so great when I get to be on the sideline and listen to those guys. The classroom isn't just between coaches and players. It's players-to-players. And so, we're really excited about that."

3. Weighty-down execution

Like clockwork since July, O'Connell has preached the significance of "weighty downs."

Unfortunately, they nipped Minnesota in the bud with the season at stake against the Rams.

When asked whether there was anything O'Connell could have done differently with play calls to support the offense in dire circumstances – like when it began to crumble against the Los Angeles pass rush, going backwards when there were ops to inch forward and subsequently live to see another down – he said the Rams wiped out a lot of quick-pass concepts by deploying single-high and split-safety coverages, and occasionally double-teaming Justin Jefferson. The L.A. game plan was designed to drag out reads.

The Vikings had ways to beat those blueprints, but they involved lots of pieces working in harmony.

"That's where it required a layer of getting into the progressions and having real decisiveness with the things we did," O'Connell said, reeling off factors. "That was our protection plan. That was knowing where to go with the football when the pocket did start to collapse. That was being able to navigate the down based upon the situation of where we're at – a third down in field goal range, making sure that we stayed in field goal range, and didn't feel the need to try to win the game on every single play – and that's play calls from me. That's execution from our quarterback and the other 10 guys in that huddle.

"It's the consistency at which we can play football and do some of the high-powered, good things we've done while avoiding some of the negatives, and there were way too many negatives across the board to be able to overcome those things when you consider the amount of yardage lost via some of those sacks versus if you take away those numbers, where we're at as an offense," he added. "And then just the plays on those weighty downs that we have to be able to either throw and catch better; we have to be able to protect better; we have to be able to have it all come together at a much higher rate in those moments in a game like that, which I always will look at [as] my responsibility to drive that thing to get there."

4. On the run game/interior offensive line

The run game and interior offensive line work hand-in-hand, no doubt.

But, let's start with the latter's impact in Week 18 and the Wild Card.

Sam Darnold was sacked 11 times over the team's final two games, in which Minnesota's guard-center-guard trio of Blake Brandel, Garrett Bradbury and Dalton Risner allowed 24 pressures per Pro Football Focus. They were sometimes confused by blitzes and/or beat outright by pass rushes.

Adofo-Mensah generally agreed with comments O'Connell made in Monday night's aftermath about needing to fix the interior of the offensive line, but affirmed the answer is more complex than simple.

"It could come from a player year-over-year improving," Adofo-Mensah detailed, listing possible solutions. "It could come from how we do things from a pass-protection standpoint; those two games revealed some issues in there that were tougher to overcome – how do you overcome them? And that's what's beautiful about football. It's this complex sport. If you want to run the football, there's a lot of ways to do it. You could maybe get better at receiver and make [defenses] play you a certain way."

Adofo-Mensah wrapped his thoughts on the topic by highlighting the importance of being two-deep on the roster – i.e. having strong, able-to-play-at-a-high-level backups – and assuring he'll collaborate with O'Connell, using creative processes to ensure that the Vikings reach a place that's catalytic of a title run.

Onto to the run game, because, yes, of course, it's intertwined with the offensive line.

In 2024, the Vikings ground attack – featuring mainly Aaron Jones, Sr., Cam Akers and Ty Chandler – averaged 4.1 yards per rush, scored nine touchdowns and moved the chains 100 times. That phase in 2023, spearheaded by Alexander Mattison, Chandler and Akers, chipped in 4.0, seven and 79 first downs.

Both groups averaged 2.3 yards before contact per rush.

"I thought we improved. I thought we did some things to be a little bit more consistent," O'Connell shared. "I still think there's always going to be room to grow as we continue to build the 2025 version of the Minnesota Vikings – having total alignment between our personnel, the things we do well in the run game, where our strong points are in the run game and then, ultimately, tying schemes into that.

"I still think that there's a lot of runway to improve, both how we put together our team, how we attack the offseason and figuring out exactly what the group up front is going to look like and ultimately how that all ties into how we want to play offense to make the quarterback's job easier – make it so that we can live in friendly down-and-distances as many times as possible," O'Connell continued. "And, maybe, the biggest thing is avoiding some of those negative [plays] that can set you back like they do."