The Vikings have requested to speak with eight candidates for their open general manager job, and could soon meet with the first female candidate to interview for a GM position in NFL history.
Vikings request interviews with Catherine Raiche, Monti Ossenfort, six others for general manager job
Raiche, the Eagles' VP of football operations, would be the first woman to interview for a GM job in NFL history. Ossenfort, the Titans' player personnel director, is a Luverne native and Minnesota Morris alumnus.
January 14, 2022 at 4:30AM
The team asked for permission to interview Catherine Raiche, the Eagles' vice president of football operations, according to a source with knowledge of the situation. Raiche, a Montreal native, has been in the Eagles' front office since 2019, after briefly working for the XFL's Tampa Bay Vipers and spending three years in the CFL with the Toronto Argonauts and Montreal Alouettes. Before working in football, she spent nearly three years as a tax lawyer in Canada.
Susan Tose Spencer, the daughter of former Eagles owner Leonard Tose, was the first female general manager in NFL history in 1983. Raiche would be the first woman to interview for a GM position, and, if hired, would become the second female GM in league history nearly 40 years after Tose Spencer did the job.
The Vikings also plan to speak with Titans player personnel director Monti Ossenfort, a Luverne native who played quarterback at the University of Minnesota, Morris and worked as a Vikings training camp intern in 2001. He went from there to work with the Texans during their first season in 2002 and was part of five Patriots Super Bowl championships in his 17 seasons with the team. He has spent the past two seasons with the Titans, who have the No. 1 seed in the AFC playoffs, and will interview for the Giants' general manager job on Friday.
At this point, according to a source, the Vikings have requested to speak with eight candidates for their GM position: Raiche, Ossenfort, Browns vice president of football operations Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, Eagles player personnel director Brandon Brown, Browns vice president of player personnel Glenn Cook, Chiefs executive director of player personnel Ryan Poles, Buccaneers vice president of player personnel John Spytek and Patriots personnel consultant Eliot Wolf.
Adofo-Mensah and Cook interviewed with the Bears earlier this week for their general manager position. Poles interviewed with the Giants on Thursday.
None of the eight on the list has been a general manager before, and the group is younger and more diverse than the Vikings' front office has been in the past. Ossenfort is the oldest candidate on the list at 43, and in addition to a woman, the group includes four Black men.
According to the NFL's Rooney Rule, the Vikings must interview at least two external minority candidates for their coach and general manager openings.
League sources on Wednesday listed Colts assistant GM Ed Dodds, Seahawks VP of player personnel Trent Kirchner and Cowboys VP of player personnel Will McClay as names to watch for the job, but McClay is out of the running after agreeing to a new contract to stay in Dallas on Thursday.
As the Vikings continued to work through their list of GM candidates, they remained in a holding pattern in talking to coaches, sources said. The list of teams looking for new head coaches grew to eight on Thursday when the Texans fired David Culley after just one season, but sources have said the Vikings job is seen as being attractive enough that the team figures to have plenty of interested coaches when it begins that stage of the interview process after hiring a GM, possibly as soon as next week.
Correction: A previous version of the story included a photo that incorrectly identified Brandon Brown, one of the NFL executives the Vikings are seeking permission to interview.
Mike Conley was in Minneapolis, where he sounded the Gjallarhorn at the Vikings game, on Sunday during the robbery.
