Leslie Frazier can finally exhale.
The former Alcorn State All-American cornerback is no longer the NFL’s most interviewed coaching candidate of the last decade now that he is interim coach of the Minnesota Vikings.
He had interviewed seven times for NFL head coaching jobs and had been passed over seven times before Vikings owner Zygi Wilf turned to him a week ago to replace Brad Childress after the Vikings started the season 3-7.
Frazier, 51, had a successful debut Sunday, as the Vikings defeated the Washington Washington Football Team 17-13 for their first road victory of the season.
“It was a great win for our team and for the organization,” he said. “Hopefully there will be many more wins in the future. It has been a tough week for our players, our organization our fans.”
Frazier is the second HBCU alumnus to be head coach in the NFL. Art Shell, who played at Maryland-Eastern Shore and had two stints as coach of the Oakland Raiders, was the first.
Frazier’s hiring ends more than two decades ago of preparation. He went into coaching in 1988 after his six-year career as a cornerback with the Chicago Bears, which included a victory in Super Bowl XX, was cut short by a knee injury. Trinity College in Deerfield, Illinois – now known as Trinity International University – hired him to build its football program from the ground up. In nine seasons, he led the NAIA program to pair of Northern Illinois Intercollegiate Conference championships.
In the ensuing years, Frazier was defensive backs coach for the University of Illinois and the Philadelphia Eagles, defensive coordinator for the Cincinnati Bengals and defensive backs coach and special assistant to head coach Tony Dungy with Indianapolis Colts, the Super Bowl XLI champions.
Frazier built an impressive resume with each stop that he made in his coaching career, and in the process became one of the NFL’s hottest head coaching prospects. Whenever a job came open, his name was always among those mentioned to fill it. He interviewed often – and well – but was never hired.
When that pattern continued, it seemed that Frazier was a victim of the Rooney Rule, which requires teams to interview at least one minority candidate for coaching vacancies, and teams were interviewing him merely to satisfy the league requirement with no intention of hiring him.
“I never doubted if I would become a head coach,” Frazier says. “I wasn’t sure if it would be in the NFL. The experience that I got at Trinity was invaluable. I felt it would come again. Sometimes it’s a little bit tough when you think you can do a good job. But I’ve seen how God has always put me in the position where He wanted me to be. Even though some doors closed, it wasn’t bad for me. I always believe when the right opportunity and time came, I would be in that place. I don’t feel bad that it didn’t work out before now.”
The Minnesota job is not an ideal situation. The Vikings, who are celebrating their golden anniversary season, are going through the most tumultuous period in their existence. They have underachieved offensively and defensively and are less than a long shot to make the playoffs.
“This is a big challenge,” Frazier says. “Our guys are looking forward. We would like to get the attitude turned around. If we do that, it gives us a chance to win. We really have to address the mindset of the team and get them focused. If we’re able to do that week end and week out, we’ve got enough good players (to win). The thing I’m trying to get across is to stay focused.”
They lost to the New Orleans Saints, the eventual Super Bowl champion, in last season’s NFC Conference Championship game.
They began the 2010 season as one of the favorites to represent the NFC in this season’s Super Bowl. But there season has been shrouded in controversy, leading Wilf to fire Childress.
“We’ve gone through a tough, tough year,” Frazier says. “We had high expectations. My goal is to get us back focused on what our goal is – to win. My job is to turn attitudes around.”
Vikings All-Pro running back Adrian Peterson said before Sunday’s game against the Washington Football Team that there’s “a good vibe” around the team since Frazier took over. That speaks volumes for the immediate impact that Frazier has made already.
He inherited a fractured Vikings locker room. Team members had a variety of issues during Childress’ tenure that go all the way back to 2007 when the coach fined receiver Troy Williamson a game’s pay for missing a game to be in South Carolina following a death in the family. In 2008, Childress said Tavaris Jackson would be the starting quarterback only to bench him two games into the season in favor of Gus Frerotte, which didn’t sit well with a number of players. The team’s 6-0 start last season helped mask the problems that bubbled beneath the surface in the wake of signing quarterback Brett Favre, who Childress picked up at the airport when the quarterback arrived in the Twin Cities.
Part Two of the Favre circus has been an even bigger distraction. It began with three teammates flying to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and coaxing Favre to play another season after he had said he was retiring. The future Hall of Famer has been beset with injuries, and the NFL is investigating allegations against him and whether he texted inappropriate messages to a female employee of the New York Jets. A bad situation got downright funky when Childress waived wide receiver Randy Moss – without informing Wilf – less than a month after trading for the seven-time Pro Bowler.
Wilf dumped Childress after weeks of speculation following the Vikings’ embarrassing 31-3 loss to the Green Bay Packers, their NFC North Division rivals.
All eyes are now on how Frazier handles the Favre situation. One of the first things he did was to say unequivocally that Favre, who wasn’t on the same page as Childress, would continue as the starter.
“Brett Favre is a Hall of Fame quarterback,” he says. “There’s a lot of stuff going on. You have to deal with the adversity. You have deal with the good and the bad. I’ve talked with him about every scenario he has been involved in. Communication with him is critical to our success. I have confidence in him.”
The consensus is Frazier is ideally suited to resuscitate the Vikings, who are still considered to be one of the more talented teams in the NFL, despite their record. He always appears to be on an even keel. He has a reputation for being straightforward with players in his role as defensive coordinator, and he has impeccable communications skills.
Frazier’s calm demeanor and people skills have drawn favorable comparisons to Dungy, his mentor, and enables him to connect with players – something Childress apparently failed to do. He acknowledges Dungy has had an enormous influence on him.
“Tony has been a great friend, a mentor in so many ways,” Frazier says. Working for him was big highlight of my career. Observing how he handled certain situations, his faith and to see how committed he was to his faith and never wavered was a tremendous testimony. I’m grateful for our time together.”
Frazier says the lessons that he learned playing for Hall of Fame coach Marino Casem at Alcorn have had an influence on his coaching philosophy, as well as his personal growth and development.
“Alcorn is very dear to may heart.” he said. “I learned so much from Coach Casem and (assistant coach) Willie McGowan. They instilled tough mentality and compassion and the competitive nature to succeed. One thing that I learned from them is to be able to trust players. For some reason, they believed in me as a person and a player. That helped me a great deal. I have tried to do the same thing.”
Casem says he never envisioned Frazier becoming a coach during his All-American days at Alcorn. But after seeing how he has grown in the profession, he is convinced Frazier will be a successful NFL head coach.
“He was a real laid back kid,” Casem says. “He wasn’t a firebrand. He easily motivated. He wasn’t the kind you had to holler at and dog. He gave you every bit he had all the time. You never had to worry about him. I can’t say that I thought about him being a coach. But he was a student of the game. It’s not surprising that he’s where he is after what he did at Trinity.”
“He deserves it,” says former Tampa Bay Buccaneers tight end and fellow Alcorn alumnus Jimmie Giles. “He relay worked hard. He deserves it more so than some other guys. He has always been the serious type. A lot of guys played football, and they played outside of football. He studied. He was the first to show up and the last to leave. I knew he would be successful at whatever he did.”
Frazier’s interim label essentially means the Vikings are giving him a six-game audition for the job on a permanent basis. Wilf has said he will assess the situation after the season is over, and Frazier isn’t speculating about what will happen if the Vikings play well down the stretch.
“I’m more concerned about the now,” he said during the news conference when he was named interim coach. “If we perform the way we are capable of performing, the way we’ve all seen this Vikings team perform when we were winning back-to-back NFC North championships, things will take care of themselves.”
