The Minnesota Vikings made it official today, hiring Indianapolis Colts' defensive backs coach Alan Williams as their new defensive coordinator, replacing Fred Pagac. Pagac will go back to his old job as the team's linebackers coach, while Mike Singletary will continue to stay on in some sort of special assistant capacity. I have no idea what the heck Singletary is actually going to be doing, but hey. . .he's not really part of the coaching staff any more, as far as I can tell.
Ted went over some of Williams' credentials yesterday, and Landonio has a nice breakdown of Williams' coaching career in the FanPosts.
The team also brought in Brendan Daly to be the team's defensive line coach, replacing Karl Dunbar. Daly served as an assistant in Minnesota from 2006 to 2008, and has spent the last three seasons as the defensive line coach of the St. Louis Rams. Also, Joe Woods is still somehow employed by this team as the defensive backs coach.
My instinct tells me that I should be killing this hire right now. At first blush, it appears that Williams was hired because he a) is a disciple of the Tampa-2 style of defense and b) worked with Leslie Frazier in the past, both in Tampa Bay and in Indianapolis. But I'm not going to do that. Why?
As it pertains to his current (and potential future) career as a head coach in the National Football League, Leslie Frazier's ass is on the line in 2012, and he strikes me as a guy that's smart enough to know that his ass is on the line. If he realizes this, and this is the coaching staff that he wants to roll into the 2012 NFL season with, then that's his call. Either this staff will move this rebuilding project forward and get this team moving in the right direction. . .or they'll all be looking for jobs starting the day after the 2012 season ends.
I'm not even going to kill the adherence to the Tampa-2 because, quite frankly, at this point I don't think it would make any difference what defensive scheme this team was running. They simply don't have the talent in the back part of the defense, whether it's because of injury or whatever the cause may be, to be an effective pass defense, even with a defensive line that led the NFL in sacks. It's not a "Tampa-2 problem" or a problem that a shift to a 3-4 defense is immediately going to solve.
Basically, we finally have a new defensive coordinator, and a full staff of coaches to head down to Mobile for the Senior Bowl next week. Hey, that's more than what we could say 24 hours ago, isn't it?