Carolina Panthers wide receiver Adam Thielen is a Minnesota boy.
Hailing from Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, he played collegiately with the Minnesota Golden Gophers before the Minnesota Vikings signed him as an undrafted free agent.
Thielen, however, exited from the franchise that drafted him after last season—a causality of his impending $19.97 million cap hit against his declining production.
He recently spoke with the Daily Delivery podcast about what led to his exit, from his perspective.
“I think there are like two sides of it,” said Thursday. “It was a bummer. I didn’t want to leave Minnesota. I wanted to end my career there. Obviously, that would be the perfect fairy tale way to do it, right? But that’s not reality. I’m so thankful for that organization, (general manager) Kwesi (Adofo-Mensah) and (Kevin O’Connell) and the staff. The way they handled this throughout the process was first-class.”
Though there are no hard feelings for the Vikings, Thielen said it was clear the organization had a different vision for his future than he did.
“You know, it’s really hard to explain the entire situation,” Thielen said. “I don’t think there was ever a point where I was unhappy with what I was doing. It was just pretty clear that they had a different vision for me than maybe I had for a way that I could help the team win games. There wasn’t a wrong thing. There wasn’t disrespect on either side. I think it was just time for both sides to move on.”
