The Vikings made a pair of coaching staff changes on Friday, using an external hire and an internal move to replace two coaches who’d taken leaves of absence during the 2023 season.
Vikings hire former Broncos coach Marcus Dixon to lead defensive line
The Vikings made two moves Friday to replace coaches who took leaves of absence during the 2023 season.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
February 9, 2024 at 11:33PM
The team hired former Broncos defensive line coach Marcus Dixon to the same role in Minnesota, bringing Dixon in to fill a job that had been vacant since October when Chris Rumph took a leave of absence from the team before becoming Clemson’s defensive ends coach in December. Assistant defensive line coach Pat Hill ran the Vikings’ defensive line room for the final three months of the season after Rumph left, with the help of assistant head coach Mike Pettine.
On Friday, the Vikings announced a change to Pettine’s role to fill one of the other openings on their staff. They made Pettine their outside linebackers coach to replace Mike Smith, who spent the entire 2023 regular season away from the team on a leave of absence.
Pettine, a confidant of Kevin O’Connell’s who gave the Vikings head coach his first NFL job as a quarterbacks coach in Cleveland, has been on O’Connell’s staff since he came to Minnesota in 2022. Pettine played a key role in helping defensive coordinator Brian Flores design the pressure packages the Vikings frequently used last season.
Pettine will keep his assistant head coach title but will now work with the Vikings’ edge rushers directly. Smith, meanwhile, has agreed to part with the team, a source with knowledge of the discussions said Friday.
Though the Vikings replaced defensive coordinator Ed Donatell with Flores before the 2023 season, they retained many of their defensive position coaches from 2022. They added inside linebackers coach Mike Siravo and three assistant position coaches (Hill, assistant linebackers coach Thad Bogardus and assistant defensive backs coach Michael Hutchings) while bringing in Flores’ longtime assistant Lance Bennett as a defensive quality control coach. But Rumph, Smith and defensive backs coach Daronte Jones, who had all been part of O’Connell’s first staff in Minnesota, stayed for the 2023 season.
Jones, who interviewed for the Giants’ defensive coordinator job this offseason, is the only lead defensive position coach remaining from O’Connell’s first staff in Minnesota as the team heads into 2024.
Dixon was the assistant defensive line coach on the Los Angeles Rams staff with O’Connell that won the Super Bowl after the 2021 season.
Mike Conley was in Minneapolis, where he sounded the Gjallarhorn at the Vikings game, on Sunday during the robbery.
