“Calling it quits with the Bills is a sad day for me,” Frazier said. “I loved playing in Buffalo, but I take great pride and joy being part of something like this, turning around a franchise.”
Leslie Frazier is a former NFL player who has been rumored to be the next head coach of the Chicago Bears. Frazier was a Buffalo Bills assistant head coach for the past two seasons and had his greatest triumph and tragedy as a player with the team.
The Chicago Bears are expected to fire head coach Matt Nagy this summer, and one of the first names to surface as a possible successor bears a throwback to the team’s most illustrious days.
Leslie Frazier, the current assistant head coach of the Buffalo Bills, was named on Thursday.
Frazier, who was the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings from 2010 to 2013 and was a contender for the Houston Texans position last year, was a part of the legendary “46” defense as a defensive back for the 1985 Chicago Bears, who won Super Bowl 20 by crushing the New England Patriots. Frazier would bring that storied legacy back to Chicago, a city still searching for its first football championship title since that 1985 season, just as that team’s head coach was a former player from a previous Bears championship team — Mike Ditka was the Bears’ tight end on the 1963 NFL champions.
The 1985 Bears defense, led by Leslie Frazier, danced their way to NFL fame.
Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images | Leslie Frazier
In 1985, the Bears had a wild and amazing 15-1 season that culminated in Super Bowl 20. Their renowned “46” defense, commanded by Buddy Ryan, was one of the most powerful teams in NFL history, despite Ryan’s famous refusal to interact with head coach Mike Ditka.
And Frazier, who, according to ESPN’s Dan Graziano, has surfaced as a possibility for the inevitable Chicago coaching vacancy, was a significant part of their success, leading the Bears with six interceptions that season.
With their groundbreaking “Super Bowl Shuffle” music video, the larger-than-life phenomenon known as William “Refrigerator” Perry, and quarterback Jim McMahon’s controversial quotes — real and imagined — and even more controversial “Rozelle” headbands, that Bears team will always be remembered as one of the most colorful one-hit wonders in NFL history.
It all came to a head in the Super Bowl in New Orleans against the pre-Bill Belichick Patriots, who were huge underdogs. The Bears pummeled the Patriots in record-breaking manner, winning by a score of 46-10, the largest blowout in the first 20 Super Bowls.
A spectacular performance tinged with bittersweetness and marred by a terrible injury
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The Bears, on the other hand, had a bittersweet Super Bowl 20 experience.
It would be another 21 years until they returned to the Super Bowl. The late, great running back Walter Payton, dubbed “Sweetness,” was distraught that he was not given the chance to score a Super Bowl touchdown — instead, Perry scored from a yard out late in the game — and retired two years later.
On a fake punt return, Frazier tore all the main ligaments in his left knee, ending his night at the Superdome and, eventually, his playing career. Frazier would never play another down in the NFL after what occurred in 1986, when the sort of arthroscopic surgery that currently restores ACL tear victims to full health in less than a year was still in its infancy.
Despite the fact that his playing career was over, he was quickly hired as a coach.
Frazier found Super success and a chance at the top position as a coach once again.
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Frazier took the head coaching post at Trinity International University, an NAIA institution in Deerfield, IL, in 1988 after finishing his playing career, and remained there for eight years until moving up to Division I with the Fighting Illini for two seasons in 1996-97.
Then it went back to the NFL as the defensive backs coach for the Philadelphia Eagles (1999-02), defensive coordinator for the Cincinnati Bengals (2003-04), and two seasons with Tony Dungy and the Indianapolis Colts. Frazier was promoted associate head coach in his second season in 2006, and the Peyton Manning-led Colts made it to the Super Bowl and won it… by beating Frazier’s previous club, the Bears.
But it was all about moving ahead at this time, and Frazier joined the Minnesota Vikings’ coaching staff the next year, serving as interim head coach in 2010 before being named permanent head coach in 2011. His Vikings were 3-13 in Frazier’s first season after emerging from the brief but controversial Brett Favre era, but achieved the largest turnaround in team history in 2012, finishing 10-6 and reaching the NFL playoffs.
Frazier was fired after the team regressed in 2013, but he stayed in the game as a defensive coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Baltimore Ravens before being named defensive coordinator by the Buffalo Bills in 2017 and promoted to assistant head coach in 2020, when they advanced to the AFC Championship Game.
During his time in Buffalo, club owner Kim Pegula pushed for him to return to the position as head coach. Frazier came close with the Texans in 2020, but a true return to Soldier Field for a former Chicago winner could be more appropriate.
Pro Football Reference provided the statistics.
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