The Story Of Adam Thielen Proving the Critics Wrong

If you’re from Minnesota there’s a good chance that you know the name Adam Thielen. If not, If he is one of the NFL’s top receivers and plays for our purple and gold Minnesota Vikings. His catches and big time plays are what he is known for, but what we want to highlight is how he got to the NFL when everyone else counted him out.

Adam is a pure athlete, and helped his high school of Detroit Lakes to a 2A State Title in golf, and also was an outstanding basketball player. Of course he played football, and received All-Conference and All-State state honors his senior year, but no colleges were looking at him. He actually had set his sights on playing D-III basketball when he got a call from Minnesota State Mankato offering him a $500 scholarship. If you know college costs, $500 might be able to get you a couple books if that, so that type of scholarship is almost a slap in the face, but he took the chance anyway because he still wanted to play football.

He did not have an outstanding career at MSU until his senior year where he had 1,100 receiving yards and 8 touchdowns. Now don’t get it wrong, those are good numbers, but those aren’t numbers that NFL teams are specifically looking for from a D-II player.

Options for a small college football player are very limited, and Thielen wasn’t invited to the scouting combine in Indianapolis so he took matters into his own hands and paid his own way to a regional combine in Chicago. These combines didn’t have NFL scouts there, these were meant to collect your stats and then hope your numbers are good enough to move onto a super-regional combine that NFL scouts would attend. 

Adam ended up running a 4.45 in the 40-yard dash and that was enough to attract the attention of scouts. They asked for game film and he now had his hopes up to possibly be drafted, but come draft day his name wasn’t called.

After the draft two teams made him offers, the Carolina Panthers and the Minnesota Vikings, but at this point he was nervous that these offers wouldn’t turn into anything so he interviewed for an internship at Patterson Dental, but let them know he would also be trying out for the Minnesota Vikings.

Adam had an outstanding mini camp and the Vikings ended up cutting someone so that they could lock him up.

Even though he made the team, Thielen was brought on as more of a blocker and a special teams player who would have to earn his role as a wide receiver against guys that were said to be better than him. 

Again he proved himself by being outstanding on Special Teams and when he was put into the game as a wide receiver, he made important catches and was consistent. He then graduated from special teams to being a full-time wide receiver.

With this decision came a lot of doubters.  

“You’re telling me you don’t know a scrub when you see a scrub” - Stephen A. Smith

“He has shown flashes but he is not consistent enough” - Colin Cowherd

“He’s going to struggle” - Tiki Barber

But Adam didn’t let other people's opinions define him. He went on to not only be good, or great, but arguably one of the best receivers in the NFL. Since being in the league he has been a 2x Pro Bowler, Second Team All Pro, set the NFL record for games over 100+ yards with 8, and having 74 receptions in the first half of the season. The Vikings went on to extend his contract in 2019 for 4 years $64 million.

With this brand we want to highlight stories that mean something, show that you can do ANYTHING you want if you put your best effort into it, and Adam Thielen is the perfect person to start this off. People will always have an opinion about you, but it only matters what you believe in. If you believe in yourself, there’s always a way.