According to Access Vikings, Vikings' defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier has interviewed for three different head coaching jobs since Minnesota's season ended last weekend. The speculation is that he's a finalist for two of those jobs, and the longer this goes on, the more I have the feeling that the Vikings are going to be in the market for another defensive coordinator in the very near future.
The two jobs that Frazier is a finalist for are the head coaching vacancies in St. Louis and Denver. The folks over at Mile High Report asked me to give an opinion of Leslie Frazier, and I simply stated that the Broncos would be wise to hire Frazier as their head coach. As much as I would hate to lose him. . .and wonder if we shouldn't promote him to our OWN head coaching spot. . .he's a worthy candidate, and his performance has justified a promotion with another team for him.
Of those two jobs, I think that the Denver job would be a better choice for Frazier. The NFL is a "what have you done for me lately" enterprise, and the Broncos are clearly much more suited to win now than the Rams are. Denver already has an all-world offense with Jay Cutler, Brandon Marshall, and Eddie Royal (among others), but their defense is pretty awful, ranking near the bottom of the league in both points and yardage allowed. Bringing in a defensive guy like Frazier would help the Broncos in their attempts to build their defense. St. Louis has some talent at their disposal, but not nearly as much as the Broncos do.
Frazier has also interviewed with the Detroit Lions, and they shouldn't automatically be dismissed as a candidate there, either. Having coached in the NFC North the past couple of years, he has knowledge of the offenses of the other 3 NFC North teams, which would be of a great benefit to them. And, hey, if you're going to a team that just completed the first 0-16 season in NFL history, you know that you can't possibly screw it up any worse than the last guy did.
All in all, I think we're going to end up losing Leslie Frazier to one of these three teams. Frazier deserves his shot at a head coaching job, and he's going to get it in the next couple of days.