The Minnesota Vikings' Coaching Staff: A Defensive and Special Teams Profile

This is Part Two of a two-part profile on the Minnesota Vikings coaching staff. This part covers defense and special teams. Part One, which covers head coach Brad Childress and the offense, can be found here.


Prior to the Brad Childress era, the Vikings had a reputation for cycling through defensive coordinators because they couldn’t find one that could field a respectable unit with any consistency.

Over the past three years, Minnesota has faced a more encouraging problem: The team’s stout defense keeps producing candidates for head coaching positions.

Childress’ offensive roots forced him to look outside his own circles to fill out his defensive staff.  Given the considerable success his defensive hires have enjoyed to date, he might want to consider a similar tact when screening candidates for the offense as well.

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Childress has no prior history with the first defensive coordinator he hired, Tampa Bay defensive backs coach Mike Tomlin. Tomlin turned enough heads in directing the league’s No. 8 defense that he lasted only a year in Minnesota before the Steelers snatched him away.

That brought Leslie Frazier, another defensive backs coach, into the mix. Frazier picked up a Super Bowl ring with the 2006 Colts, and managed the Eagles’ secondary in Childress’ first few seasons in Philadelphia, making him one of just two Vikings defensive coaches with ties to Childress (the other, assistant defensive backs coach Derek Mason, played cornerback at NAU in two of Childress’ seasons there).

Frazier's resume actually includes an earlier run as a defensive coordinator. He headed the Bengals defense in 2003 and 2004. Those units finished No. 28 and No. 19 in the league respectively, and Frazier a pink slip from Marvin Lewis after two seasons (considering Cincinnati finished 27th in defense the following year, it's hard to imagine that Frazier was the problem).

After his promotion in Minnesota, it took Frazier a year to find his bearings. The defense fell to No. 20 in Frazier’s first season, but rebounded to No. 6 in his second year on the job, earning him a handful of head coaching interviews after the 2008 season.

After the decade-plus of shoddy defense that preceded Tomlin and Frazier in Minnesota, it’s no wonder teams with coaching vacancies thought highly of their work: Prior to 2006, the Vikings hadn’t boasted a top 10 defense since 1994, and hadn’t climbed out of the bottom third of the league since 1998.

Frazier, a starting corner for the iconic 1985 Bears, has built a career on developing standout defensive backs. Frazier guided his Eagles DBs to a total of eight Pro Bowl berths, helped turn Colts safety Bob Sanders into an All-Pro in 2005 and mentored Antoine Winfield to a sterling 2008 (two sacks, two picks, four forced fumbles) that earned the Vikings corner his first trip to Hawai’i.

But the calling card of his Minnesota units has been a steadfast rushing defense. Tomlin left Frazier with the league’s No. 1 run-stopping crew, and Frazier has maintained that distinction in each of his two seasons as coordinator.

That defensive three-peat isn’t merely impressive; it’s historic: The last team that led the league in rushing defense for three or more seasons in a row—the 1966-69 Dallas Cowboys—pre-dated the AFL-NFL merger.

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Minnesota’s dominance against the run survived a coordinator swap with a big helping hand from one coach who stayed put: Karl Dunbar, the Vikings’ defensive line tutor and the architect of the “Williams Wall.”         

Childress imported Dunbar from Louisiana State University, where the former Tigers lineman spent a year overseeing the D-Line after six seasons in the NFL as a player and a smattering of other coaching roles, including a turn on the Bears’ staff in 2004.

It’s easy to credit a star-studded group of linemen for Dunbar’s success in Minnesota, but while Dunbar inherited a boatload of talent, he also took over a unit that had yet to live up to its potential. The Vikings’ D-Line already featured Kevin Williams, a 2004 All-Pro selection, and added Pat Williams as a free agent in’05, but still finished 19th against the run the season before Dunbar’s arrival.

In masterminding the line’s rise to the best run-stuffing gang in the business, Dunbar also spurred Pat Williams to his first of three consecutive trips to the Pro Bowl. Last year, Dunbar worked Jared Allen into the mix to key the league’s No. 4 pass rush, with 34 of the Vikings’ 45 sacks coming from the defensive line.

That’s the kind of production that makes Minnesota’s blitz-averse Tampa 2 scheme tick. Given the stirring success of the Vikings defensive line under Dunbar’s care, don’t be surprised to see his name on a short list for the team’s defensive coordinator job if Frazier does make the leap to a head coaching role following this season.

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The D-line still faces the prospect of losing the Williamses—who are fighting four-game suspensions after testing positive for a banned dieuretic and are set for a June 15 trial date—to start the year. If that happens, look for Dunbar to enlist the help of linebackers coach Fred Pagac to keep the heat on opposing passers.

Pagac, a longtime Ohio State coach, made stops in Oakland and Kansas City before coming to Minnesota in 2006 to join the Childress regime. He had middle linebacker E.J. Henderson (4.5 sacks, three forced fumbles in 2007) on track for stardom before Henderson went down with a toe injury last year. Pagac also steered outside linebacker Chad Greenway to 5.5 sacks and three forced fumbles in a breakout sophomore campaign last season.

As discussed here, Pagac will have to ready his linebackers to step up as both pass-rushers and run-stoppers if the Williamses' appeal fails.

The stellar play of Minnesota’s front four has created quite the workload for Vikings defensive backs coach Joe Woods, who spent two years as an assistant coach in Tampa Bay before following Tomlin to the Vikes in 2005. The futility of running against the Williams Wall had meant that Woods’ secondary faced the most passing attempts in the league in both 2006 and 2007 (the addition of Allen to the pass rush in 2008 finally gave opponents pause about dropping back to throw so often).

The non-stop aerial assault has made it difficult for Woods to field a top-tier pass defense, but if he can squeeze a few more interceptions out of a secondary that recorded only 12 picks last year (25th in the league), he’ll help transform an already-formidable defense into a force to be reckoned with.


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Minnesota’s only major offseason coaching move—a change at special teams coordinator—targeted a phase of the game that gave the Vikings fits in 2008.

Minnesota finished 23rd in kickoff return average allowed, spotted opponents the highest punt-return average in football, forced the fifth-lowest fair catch total in the league, and coughed up an NFL-worst four touchdowns on punt returns.

The Vikings’ own production, meanwhile—22nd in kickoff return average, 24th in punt returns, one return TD, and more fair catches than any other pro team—fell woefully short of making up the difference.

Paul Ferraro, who presided over last year’s mess in his third season as Childress’ special teams coordinator, is out. Ferraro opted to join new Rams head coach Steve Spagnuolo—a former teammate at Springfield College and coaching colleague from multiple gigs—in St. Louis.

Childress elevated Brian Murphy, a special teams assistant entering his fourth season with Minnesota, to the coordinator role. Murphy worked as a graduate assistant at Wisconsin during Childress’ time there, and was back in Madison as special teams coordinator when Childress offered him a place with the Vikings.

Murphy will have a pair of offseason personnel pickups at his disposal: Cornerback and coverage specialist Karl Paymah, signed as a free agent out of Denver, and Glenn Holt, a free agent receiver and return man who averaged 24.3 yards per return in three years in Cincinnati. The Vikings also are said to be considering trying first-round pick Percy Harvin, a running back and receiver at Florida, in a return role.

Prior to last year, Minnesota’s special teams performances during Childress’ tenure were eminently serviceable. If Murphy can field merely average coverage and return units, he’ll ingratiate himself to his coaching colleagues on both sides of the ball.