The Vikings enter the 2025 NFL draft with just four picks: their first-rounder at No. 24, the third-round compensatory pick they received after Kirk Cousins' departure at No. 97, the fifth-round pick they acquired from Cleveland in the Za'Darius Smith trade two years ago, and the sixth-round pick they received from the 49ers as part of the Jordan Mason trade last month.

It's hard to believe Vikings General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah won't make several deals that allow him to emerge from the draft with more than four picks. But if the Vikings stay at that number, it'd be their smallest draft class in their 65-year history. If they add only one pick, they'd match the 2008 and 2009 drafts as the smallest in franchise history.

Adofo-Mensah and coach Kevin O'Connell are heading into their fourth draft together in Minnesota, having overseen teams that won two-thirds of their games with scant contributions from their drafts. Jordan Addison, Jalen Nailor and Ed Ingram were the only Adofo-Mensah draft picks to play more than 50% of the Vikings' offensive or defensive snaps last season; Ingram became the third of the Vikings' four top-100 picks from the 2022 draft to leave Minnesota when the team traded him to Houston.

Instead, the Vikings coaxed 13 wins (including 11 one-score victories) from the veteran roster they inherited in 2022, and built their 14-win team in 2024 with career years from five relatively unheralded free agents: Sam Darnold, Aaron Jones, Jonathan Greenard, Blake Cashman and Andrew Van Ginkel. However many picks they make in next week's draft, the 2025 Vikings likely will be lightly staffed with recent draft picks. Mekhi Blackmon and Dallas Turner might be the only major contributors from their 2022-24 drafts on defense, while Addison, Nailor and J.J. McCarthy — obviously the most noteworthy exception — could be the only Adofo-Mensah picks to play sizable roles on offense.

An influx of 10-plus draft picks was an annual occurrence under former GM Rick Spielman, who made 38 picks in his final three drafts. But the Vikings have stored and used draft picks differently under Adofo-Mensah, who's traded away the last three second-rounders in deals for T.J. Hockenson and the pick that eventually became Turner last year. After admitting he might have been trying to solve too many problems too quickly in 2022 — when the Vikings traded three times and spent four top-75 picks on players who haven't become starters — Adofo-Mensah has prioritized impact over quantity in the past two drafts. He declined chances to trade down so the Vikings could stay at No. 23 and pick Addison in 2023, and he traded up twice to get McCarthy and Turner last year. He's made 23 picks in three drafts, though he's matched the number of first- and second-round picks from Spielman's final three drafts (six), while taking eight players in the first three rounds.

On the Access Vikings podcast, Ben Goessling, Andrew Krammer and Emily Leiker discuss GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah's draft philosophies and wrap up their NFL draft position previews:

For Spielman, big draft classes might have been a necessity given the top-heavy structure of a roster loaded with veterans on pricey extensions. But the Vikings also made their draft-and-develop strategy central to their identity, finalizing five-year extensions with draft picks so they could time up splashy announcements, replete with family members in the audience and photo-op hugs between GM and player, with the start of training camp. While the Vikings have certainly missed on picks under Adofo-Mensah, they've used free agency more liberally than they did under Spielman, ending the six-year relationship with Cousins and saying goodbye to popular homegrown players like Camryn Bynum while viewing affordable free-agent finds as a viable way to build a roster with proven (albeit older and still more expensive) commodities.

Where former A's GM Billy Beane (who will be forever linked with baseball's "Moneyball" movement) prioritized college baseball players who'd thrived against better pitching over high school players glowing with unquantifiable promise, the Vikings have come to view free agency in a similar manner. They're searching for value among players who've produced at the NFL level but might come at a relative discount because of age or injury questions.

They'll need their drafts to hit, too, especially if McCarthy thrives and a QB megadeal necessitates cost savings on other parts of the roster. But for now, they can lean more heavily on free agency while trying to search rookie pools for transformative players.

"In some sense, it's an insurance product, right?" Adofo-Mensah said of free agency. "It is a unique thing where you're paying, but you're paying for known versus the unknown. But where that's hard is — you're never one or two players away — but what if that unknown [draft pick] is the difference between you being the team that you thought you could be versus not? It's a fascinating argument. When I'm not doing this one day, I'll go be an economics professor, maybe I'll work on some equations, and we'll talk about it in that space. But ultimately, that is the conversation that we have. You don't look at these moves in a vacuum. You look at your team in this holistic sense — what's in that room and say, 'If this player who is a more of an unknown hits, what does that mean [for your team]? And then what does that mean I want to have around that player, in terms of certainty versus uncertainty? I'm going to come up here and tell you to say that I've cracked the code, but I would say that those are the conversations we have."

The Vikings could take a number of approaches with their four picks next week, trading back to accumulate more choices or using the promise of their 2026 draft (where a comp pick for Darnold could give them four choices in the first three rounds) to pursue an impact player this year. They have needs at cornerback, guard and possibly defensive tackle, three places where the draft could give them immediate help this year.

By this point, though, Adofo-Mensah has been on the job long enough to distinguish his draft approach from Spielman's. He needs more fruit from it, but he's also shown he views it as only one potential source of a harvest.

This is an excerpt from this week's Access Vikings newsletter, which was sent to subscribers on Friday. Sign up here to have Ben Goessling's Vikings analysis delivered to your inbox. Email your Vikings questions to accessvikings@startribune.com.