That's the word coming from Tom Pelissero at ESPN 1500 in Minneapolis, anyway.
Leslie Frazier's first staff remains a work in progress, but the Minnesota Vikings' coach has told two incumbent coordinators they're free to look for other jobs.Frazier said on Sunday night he has delivered a clear message to offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell and special-teams coordinator Brian Murphy -- "Don't wait for me" -- as the search continues for coaches who would replace them.
"We're trying to get some things done," Frazier said as he left an interview at KSTP-TV's studio. "We'll make some decisions here real soon."
This, presumably, paves the way for Josh McDaniels to become the offensive coordinator for the Vikings. There haven't been any other reports of Frazier or the Vikings interviewing any other folks for the position.
I'm not sure if these moves for Frazier are particularly unusual or not. As Pelissero points out in the article, you would expect a guy coming in from the outside to completely clean house and start over from scratch, but Frazier had a working relationship with everyone on the current Vikings' staff, as pretty much everyone was hired by Brad Childress at around the same time (except for Murphy, who was brought on as special teams coach a couple of years ago). Frazier has already let a few coaches go in offensive line coach Pat Morris, assistant offensive line coach Jim Hueber, and quarterbacks coach Kevin Rogers.
It appears that Fred Pagac is safe as defensive coordinator, and Karl Dunbar had damn well better be safe as the defensive line coach, since he's pretty much the best in the business at what he does. Outside of that, it doesn't appear that anyone is truly "safe," and the end result could be a lot of turnover from someone that was hired "in-house." That said, if McDaniels and Singletary get on board. . .and it looks more and more like that will be the case. . .I think he's building a darn fine staff so far. What do you folks think?
By the way, if you want to watch the interview with Frazier where he makes these statements, the interview will air on KSTP at 10:45 PM.