Frazier's spirit unbroken despite Vikings' lost season

Something strange has been percolating through the facilities at Winter Park the past few weeks, a combination of positive energy and unity rarely seen in an NFL team struggling this bad.

Sure, there's inevitable relief creeping in, the Vikings eager to leave a disastrous 2011 season behind. Maybe, a bit of numbness factors in, too. Experience failure often enough and eventually it doesn't cut as deep.

This New Year's Day finale against the Bears? In the big picture, there aren't enough synonyms for meaningless. The only major suspense, after all, is whether the Vikings can avoid suffering their 13th loss. That would match a franchise record.

But why, after a season with so many letdowns and so much frustration, are so many Vikings dashing for the finish line with enthusiasm, vowing to reward Leslie Frazier for his continued encouragement?

"The spirits are up around here because we're taking after Coach," receiver Percy Harvin says. "There's no way you can get him down. And as a player, I think that's made a difference."

Where is the griping, the suffocating discontent, the off-the-record blasts of a first-year head coach who has shown so little from a results standpoint over the past five months to prove he's qualified for this high post?

The losses this season have come four times more frequently than the wins.

If you think Harvin's endorsement is hollow, then you haven't heard defensive tackle Kevin Williams laud Frazier's ability to set clear-cut expectations. You haven't heard tight end Visanthe Shiancoe praise Frazier's honesty. You haven't heard Toby Gerhart express his gratitude for Frazier's ability to generate extra effort.

The floor is yours now, E.J. Henderson.

"Coach Frazier sticks to his philosophies no matter what, through the ups and downs," Henderson says. "And I think when you go through a season like this, especially with a lot of young players, that consistency is something you badly need. When a leaders sticks to his philosophy, even through rough patches, you realize how deeply he trusts what he preaches. It's good for the believing-in process."

No finger-pointing

How in the world does one make sense of this, the seemingly unanimous approval of a captain who has sailed the cruise ship into a bed of rocks off the coast of New Jersey?

"I've tried to show an ability to keep the players together, to keep them from pointing fingers and complaining and doing things that would have kept us from going out to Washington and winning a game on the road," he says. "I've tried to keep them fighting and believing. That's a big challenge."

In a season as dispiriting as this one, Frazier believes even little strides need to be celebrated. So the no quitting-no bickering triumph registers as notable.

And sometimes little gestures prove galvanizing, too. Which is why Frazier opted to tweak the practice schedule after a 35-32 loss to Denver left his team at 2-11.

The Vikings' leadership committee -- Harvin, Henderson, Williams, Chad Greenway, Jared Allen, Adrian Peterson, Ryan Longwell -- first suggested the switch to Frazier, who rubber-stamped a decision to bump the start of practice up 2 1/2 hours.

"It was us seeing too many guys moping around," Harvin says. "When you have so little to look forward to and you're down to the final few games, our sense from the locker room was, 'Coach, let's get in here, let's get to work early and then let everybody go home.' Our hope was that would give us a spark."

Says cornerback Asher Allen: "He's made it clear how important it was to him that this team stay together."

Back for more

Time will tell whether Frazier has enough head-coaching savvy to truly succeed at this level.

Time will tell whether he erred in choosing Fred Pagac and Bill Musgrave as the defensive and offensive coordinators for his first year -- and perhaps beyond.

Time will tell whether Frazier can point his talent evaluators in the right direction to acquire the pieces needed to make his vision a reality.

At the end of Season 1, the outside feedback isn't encouraging. But the support from within hasn't seemed to wane.

At the very least, Frazier firmly believes he will be granted more time.

Asked Thursday if he had spoken to team ownership about his job security, he simply laughed. That's a conversation reporters continue starting, not one he ever worries about.

"Is there a reason why I would question that? No. No," Frazier said. "Not unless you don't have confidence in what you're doing and where you're going and the people you're working for."

This bleak 2011 season may be the most recent bullet point on Frazier's football résumé. But he also isn't afraid to reflect on 1985 and 2006, two seasons in which he experienced Super Bowl bliss, first as a player in Chicago under Mike Ditka and later as Indianapolis' defensive backs coach under Tony Dungy.

Staying focused

In Indianapolis, Frazier points to a 44-17 December loss to Jacksonville in which the Colts gave up 375 rushing yards, lost for the third time in four weeks and suddenly seemed to have little chance of making a deep playoff run.

"People were writing articles killing us," Frazier says. "They destroyed us in every way. But Tony came back that Monday really focused on us and not going crazy saying, 'We're going to get rid of this, get rid of that.' With both those guys, that's what I remember. They didn't let outside circumstances change the plan and the vision."

That's a big reason Frazier plans to remain firm in his beliefs, immune to the outside backlash, in tune with his players and with no designs for an extreme makeover.

"Otherwise, when you go through difficult times, the players won't know what they're going to get," he says. "They'll come in one meeting and you're one way today. They come in another meeting and you're on a different wavelength tomorrow. Pretty soon you're like Sybil. You've got 20 different personalities. And they never know which one they're going to get."