Ivy League circle expands with Adofo-Mensah

If brains can be converted into points on the football field and victories in the NFL standings, the Browns’ front office is going to be a juggernaut.

Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, hired last month as the Browns’ vicepresident of football operations, held a get-acquainted with the media Zoom conference June 11 from his office at the training complex in Berea.

Adofo-Mensah, 32, spent the past seven years with the San Francisco 49ers. He was their director of football research and development in 2018 and 2019. He had the title of manager of research and development from April of 2013-18.

Adofo-Mensah graduated from Princeton. General Manager Andrew Berry and Chief Strategy Officer Paul DePodesta are from Harvard. Coach Kevin Stefanski is from Penn. Adofo-Mensah was asked who would win if all four Ivy League graduates appeared on Jeopardy.

“I’ve never wanted to bet against myself. So I might have to go with me,” he chuckled. “Like you said, there are incredibly talented, smart people (here). I think it would be interesting. It might depend on the category. If we got a 90s hip hop or basketball (category), I think I’m taking it.”

Berry and Adofo-Mensah met at the NFL Scouting Combine in 2019, when Berry was the vice president of football operations for the Philadelphia Eagles after working as the Browns’ vice president of player personnel from 2016-18. They struck up a friendship.

Berry was re-hired by the Browns in January, this time as general manager, after John Dorsey was fired. The Browns had an opening in the front office when Eliot Wolf resigned as general manager, so now AdofoMensah will fill that role.

“I think he brings a nice blend of both an insider and an outsider perspective to football,” Berry said when Adofo-Mensah was hired. “I think probably the best part of him is just the person. He’s humble, high integrity, a continuous learner, true growth mindset and he has fantastic interpersonal and people skills.

“He is someone who can

be both a strategic thought partner with all the big decisions that we make, someone who has the capacity to be an outstanding manager as he helps run the day-today of the team, and then just someone who is going to get along with the really strong group that we have already. I think he’s really a perfect fit to add to the mix.”

Adofo-Mensah received his bachelor’s degree in economics from Princeton, where he played basketball, and his master’s degree in economics from Stanford. He worked as a commodities trader prior to his time with the 49ers. He sees a parallel in Wall Street and the NFL.

“Some people see that as very different, but I don’t see it as very different in my ability to kind of pool information to make a bet on the direction of the market versus pooling information to making a bet on the direction of an NFL player,” Adofo-Mensah said on the Zoom conference. “I think those are similar processes.

“Obviously, they are different skillsets and different information sources. I came into San Francisco with a clean slate and just learned from those guys and learned the methodology that they use. Ultimately, you’re just making decisions under uncertainty, and there are certain things that carry over across those fields.”

It is worth noting AdofoMensah started working in

San Francisco when Jim Harbaugh was the 49ers head coach. Jim Tomsula (511 in 2015) and Chip Kelly (214 in 2016) each lasted one season. John Lynch became general manager in 2017, the same year Kyle Shanahan was hired as head coach, and Adofo-Mensah survived that change, too.

“After our 2016 front office reboot, they had me study successful organizations in sports and other companies,” Adofo-Mensah said. “You really learn what it takes to make it.

“Look, this sport has tons of ups and downs every day. It’s not going to be perfect. It’s not going to be clean. You have to have people in the building who are not going to blink, know what that looks like and have a shared vision. All of that stuff sounds good when you read it, but then living that experience over these last three years – 2017 was not easy and 2018 was not easy – I saw John and Kyle never blink. Nobody else beneath them blinked. We always knew we were building toward something. Seeing that up close, I just know that is what it takes to win and I will never back down from that.”

The 49ers were 6-10 in 2017 and 4-12 in 2018. They were 13-3 last season and advanced to the Super Bowl, where they blew a 2010 lead after three quarters and lost to the Kansas City Chiefs, 31-20.