The Vikings have waived Adam Thielen after he asked for his release. The veteran receiver has just eight receptions for 69 yards this season. David Berding / Getty Images
EAGAN, Minn. — The Minnesota Vikings waived longtime wide receiver Adam Thielen on Monday. The team and Thielen announced the news.
“This is tremendously difficult for me to write and certainly not how any of us imagined this to go,” Thielen wrote on X.
The 35-year-old was inactive for Sunday’s game in Seattle against the Seahawks. After the game, coach Kevin O’Connell explained that it was a coach’s decision for football reasons.
Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah said that Thielen’s representation approached the team and asked for his release. Thielen has long viewed the 2025 season as his last, which was partly why the Vikings acquired him in the first place.
“Following discussions through the weekend and out of respect for Adam,” Adofo-Mensah said in a statement, “we have agreed to give him the opportunity to pursue more playing time elsewhere.“
#Skol https://t.co/PmpGmts9lr pic.twitter.com/AAZl4B0q6j
— Adam Thielen (@athielen19) December 1, 2025
In August, Minnesota traded a 2026 fifth-round draft pick and a 2027 fourth-round pick for Thielen, a 2027 fifth-round pick and a conditional 2026 seventh-round pick. At the time, the Vikings were looking for insurance for receiver Jalen Nailor, who was recovering from a hand injury.
Thielen never played a meaningful role in a Vikings offense that resides among the NFL’s worst in almost every meaningful metric. This season, he caught eight passes for 69 yards and only played 185 offensive snaps.
Thielen, a native of Detroit Lakes, Minn., who attended Minnesota State, was signed by the Vikings after going undrafted in 2014. He spent his first nine NFL seasons in Minnesota, earning two Pro Bowl nods and compiling what was at the time the third-most receptions (534) in franchise history (after Cris Carter and Randy Moss). He spent the 2023 and 2024 seasons with the Panthers before his trade back to the Vikings.
Dec 1, 2025
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