First-year Minnesota Vikings head coach Leslie Frazier is often called a “player’s coach,” meaning he has great respect among the athletes he leads because he came up through the ranks of professional sports as a player himself.
Frazier’s job as top coach for the Vikings is his first shot at this elite position within the NFL. He’s off to a rough start. The Vikings have lost all four of their first games under Frazier, so the heat is already starting to simmer among fans and the sports media.
Still, Frazier has enormous respect because of his long career in football. He played college ball at Alcorn State University of Lorman, Mississippi. As defensive back there he achieved All-American status. He was drafted into the NFL and played cornerback for the Chicago Bears, where he excelled, helping the Bears win the Super Bowl in 1985. Frazier led Chicago in interceptions from 1982 through 1985.
His playing career was cut tragically short by a bad knee injury during the Super Bowl itself. It was enough to end his days as a player. Frazier found his way back to the NFL as a coach in 1999 when he landed a job as defensive backs coach for the Philadelphia Eagles.
Frazier already had considerable coaching experience at the college level, serving as head coach for Trinity College in Illinois, beginning in 1986. As head coach of a small college program, Frazier excelled, and is credited with building Trinity’s football program “from the ground up” and winning two Illinois Intercollegiate Conference Championships.
After his stint with the Eagles, Frazier found more NFL-level coaching work with the Indianapolis Colts, working under Tony Dungy, and was defensive coordinator at Cincinnati for two years. In 2007 he came to the Minnesota Vikings as a defensive coach working under head coach Brad Childress. When the Vikings season began to fall apart in the second year of the team’s great two-year “Brett Favre experiment” Childress was canned and Leslie Frazier was named head coach, where he helped the team eek out a couple more victories before a disastrous end to the season.
So with the 2011 season, Frazier’s long playing and coaching career finally reached the pinnacle of NFL coaching jobs — head coach – but it has proven to be an extremely rough ride so far. With his new team at 0-4, there is already grumbling about what’s wrong with the team, and early blame is naturally falling on the guy in charge.
The Vikings are rich in talent. Adrian Peterson is far-and-away considered the best running back in the game today. The Vikings have tapped veteran Donovan McNabb to helm at quarterback. They also have future super stars, such as receiver Percy Harvin, considered to be perhaps the most exciting receiver in the game. The Vikings have stellar defensive stars as well, such as Jared Allen and Chad Greewnway.
Thus, with so much talent, blame for the mounting losses is falling on the coaching staff. Still, the players love Leslie Frazier as head coach. They respect him, and call him a “great motivator.” Many think Frazier can turn this team around. Tens of thousands of fans still purchase Vikings tickets in the hope that Frazier can turn around his team.
