Back in early December, an interesting update came via ESPN that the Chicago Bears were beginning to research possible head coaches. Insider Dan Graziano mentioned Buffalo Bills defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier by name as a strong possibility. It was hard to ignore given Graziano’s strong credentials and Frazier’s well-documented history with the organization. He played cornerback for the fabled 1985 Super Bowl champion Bears.
A few weeks have passed and it seems that rumor isn’t going away. Quite the opposite in fact. Dan Wiederer of the Chicago Tribune, so recently having delivered a huge column on the inner turmoil of Halas Hall, mentioned Frazier as a strong candidate the Bears should look at. SM stated that one person helping the organization in their search is Hall of Fame head coach Tony Dungy. Guess who happens to be a major advocate of Frazier?
Dungy believes it’d be easy to connect the dots on a Frazier return to Chicago.
“Leslie is special,” Dungy said. “With his connection to the Bears and knowing that city, the organization and the mentality there, I don’t know how you couldn’t give him serious consideration. … Les knows how to galvanize people. He brings players together. And he has always had a good vision for how to get the most out of people.”
Dungy knows the Bills defensive coordinator quite well.
They worked together for two seasons in Indianapolis where they won the Super Bowl in 2006. After that, the young assistant headed off to Minnesota where he eventually became their head coach in 2011. He had some initial success with a 10-6 record in 2012 including a playoff run, Frazier wasn’t able to make it past three years. It didn’t seem to affect his ability to coach though.
He became a defensive coordinator with Tampa Bay in 2014 and took them from 25th overall his first year to 10th his second. After leaving the Buccaneers in 2016, he soon earned the same job with the Bills. Since his arrival, Buffalo has fielded a top 5 defense in three of the past four seasons. They rank #1 overall with two games to play this season. So this interest isn’t just about history with the franchise. Frazier is thriving.
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Most believe Leslie Frazier was hamstrung in Minnesota
The teams he fielded displayed strong effort and discipline. They were aggressive too. So it’s hard for some to understand why he managed only a 21-31-1 record as a head coach. To those that were in Minnesota or even around the league, it wasn’t a difficult mystery to solve. In a little over three years on the job, Frazier never had a definitive solution at the quarterback position.
Even at that time, after a backslide season, many of Frazier’s players, coaches and others around the league expressed hope that he one day would get another opportunity to be the head coach for a team with its quarterback position stabilized. That was, after all, a heavy anchor that kept the Vikings’ ship from charting a championship course.
In 54 games as Vikings coach, Frazier was on a hyper-speed carousel that saw the Vikings use six starters — from Brett Favre to Joe Webb to Donovan McNabb to Christian Ponder to Matt Cassel to Josh Freeman.
Yikes. Not exactly an inspiring lineup.
Favre was 41-years old and approaching retirement by the time Leslie Frazier entered the picture. Webb was a backup. Ponder was a 1st round bust from the ugly 2011 draft class. McNabb was 35 and had already flamed out in both Philadelphia and Washington the past two years. As for Cassel, he’d long since regressed from the player he was between 2008 and 2010 in New England and Kansas City.
What likely made it sting even more is the Vikings had shots at both Ryan Tannehill and Russell Wilson in 2012. That Ponder pick the year prior was a death blow to Frazier’s coaching tenure. He just didn’t know it at the time. Maybe Justin Fields represents the perfect opportunity for him to show everybody that he can be a great head coach in the NFL.
