Jim Souhan: Frazier has faith in God, Vikings

Leslie Frazier is sitting in the head coaching suite at Winter Park, wearing jeans and a black sweater. He leans forward and tells his life story, from being raised by his grandmother in Columbus, Miss., to dancing the Super Bowl Shuffle, to his promotion last week to interim coach of the Vikings.

It's a quiet Friday afternoon, snow is swirling outside, and he's 45 hours away from his second game at the Vikings' helm. He could easily avoid speaking of grand goals, but he looks you in the eye and says:

"I want to win a championship here. I want to bring a championship to the Minnesota Vikings. When I was interviewing with other teams last year, I'd find myself thinking, 'Man, these people don't really want to win a championship.' Because if you look at my history and all the places I've been, things have gotten better.

"I've always believed -- and I believe it now -- that we're going to win. We're going to win in Minnesota. We'll bring a championship to Minnesota over time. My history tells me that there's a very, very good chance that that's going to happen."

It is a remarkable history, full of intuitive decisions that led him down a road few NFL head coaches have traveled.

"I really didn't have a father in my life, growing up, on a regular basis," he said. "My mother was dealing with some things, so my grandmother took us in."

Ozella Gaston cared for Frazier and his two younger brothers, but he lacked a male role model.

"What I did in sports, and what I did to become a man, came from him and watching how he treated his family," Frazier said. "I don't know what direction I would have gone in if that male figure hadn't been there."

Frazier played football and baseball at Alcorn State and signed with the Chicago Bears as a free agent. He eventually became a starting cornerback and leading interceptor on one of the great defenses ever, the '85 Bears.

That team made Frazier famous, in part because he appeared in the infamous "Super Bowl Shuffle" video.

"I wasn't sure that was a good idea," he said. "We had just lost to Miami, and we were all bummed out about losing, and we went and shot a video saying we were going to win the Super Bowl."

The Bears blew out the Patriots in the Super Bowl, but Frazier suffered a major knee injury during the game. He rehabilitated for 18 months. As he was preparing for training camp, Frazier received a letter from Trinity College in Illinois, which was starting a football program.

"I balled up that letter and put it in the wastebasket," Frazier said.

Trinity eventually lured him to a meeting. He recommended a friend for the job but told himself, "Man, this could be a good fit for me if I decided to go into coaching -- but I looked at Mike Ditka and the coaches I had played for and said, 'That's not me."'

He flew to Seattle for a physical with the Seahawks that January. On the flight home, Frazier realized his leg might not withstand an NFL season and decided his playing career hadn't ended during a Super Bowl victory so he could use his business degree.

At age 28, he took the Trinity job.

"My agent," he said, "went ballistic."

He worked with Brad Childress there, and when Mike Tomlin left the Vikings to coach the Steelers, Childress asked Frazier, then an assistant under Dungy in Indianapolis, to become his defensive coordinator.

"With my history with Brad, I thought it was a great opportunity," Frazier said. "Tony and some of the other people in Indy were like, 'What are you doing?' because the Vikings had struggled."

In Minnesota, Frazier became known as a soft-spoken players coach.

"When people say I'm reserved that's a little bit of a misnomer," Frazier said. "There are moments, and our players will tell you this, that if I need to get after guys, I will. It will be pointed and direct. I'm not afraid to let them know what we expect, whether it's Jared [Allen] or Adrian [Peterson.]"

Frazier appreciates the influence of Reid, Dungy and Childress on his career, but his most important mentors surfaced early in his life, when a coach introduced him to sports and his grandmother instilled in him "my strong faith."