Underrated detail of Vikings' first round draft trade shows Kwesi Adofo-Mensah is ahead of the game

The Vikings made some good moves during the NFL Draft, but none were better than when they traded up from No. 23 to No. 17 in order to take EDGE Dallas Turner. 

The Vikings traded up to get Turner, but they still stole the draft's best edge player. I had him at No. 7 overall on my board. Outside of quarterback, defensive end was the team's biggest need after losing Danielle Hunter in free agency. Now, Turner (10 sacks in 2023) can team up with free agent acquisition Jonathan Greenard to give the Vikings a legitimate one-two punch off the edge. - Matt Miller, ESPN

The Vikings traded Nos. 23 and 167 (5th round) in the 2024 draft and a third- and fourth-rounder in 2025 to move and take a guy who many thought was indeed the draft's best defender. 

At first, it seems like that's a lot of draft capital to dish out in order to move up six spots in the back half of the first round. But when remembering a key, yet underrated, detail about the Vikings' future, the trade makes Vikings GM, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, look like an absolute genius.

It's the fact that the Vikings are currently slated to receive two third-round compensatory picks for the losses of Kirk Cousins and Danielle Hunter in free agency. Both players were signed to huge contracts and based off the NFL's compensatory formula, those deals will meet the required threshold to give the Vikings a third-round compensatory pick for each one.

KAM can navigate free agency to the point where the Vikings can still add guys, but they won't be players whose contracts cancel out the comp picks. There is no official, public formula for us to use, but he's smart enough to where he'll know who to pick and who not to pick.

So, ultimately the Vikings are on track to replace both of the picks they used to trade for Turner and one of them has the potential to be even better than one of the traded picks. Essentially, the Vikings could come out of this just trading a fifth-rounder, which is wild to think about.

That, my friends, is how you GM in the NFL and it's the epitome of thinking/planning ahead.