{"id":726825,"date":"2026-02-03T18:13:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T18:13:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/726825\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T18:13:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T18:13:15","slug":"vikings-announce-3-additions-to-1-promotion-in-kevin-oconnells-coaching-staff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/726825\/","title":{"rendered":"Vikings Announce 3 Additions to, 1 Promotion in Kevin O\u2019Connell\u2019s Coaching Staff"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n  Gerald Alexander \u2014 Defensive Passing Game Coordinator\/Defensive Backs Coach<\/p>\n<p>Hometown: Los Angeles, California<\/p>\n<p>Career Path: played safety at Boise State from 2003-06; second-round draft pick (No. 61 overall) by Detroit in 2007; traded to Jacksonville in 2009; had stints with Carolina, Miami and the Jets; recorded four interceptions, 14 pass breakups, 2.0 sacks and 159 total tackles across 44 career games (30 starts); assisted Arkansas State in 2013; served as a graduate assistant at Washington under his college head coach, Chris Petersen, in 2014; participated in the Bill Walsh Minority Internship Program with the Titans in 2015 training camp and then coached defensive backs at Indiana State; participated in the aforementioned program with the Buccaneers in 2016 and then coached the secondary at Montana State; joined California-Berkeley as the defensive backs coach in 2017 and held that title through 2019 (also had a minority coaching internship with Miami in 2019); hired by then-Dolphins head coach Brian Flores to be Miami&#8217;s DBs coach in 2020; spent two seasons assisting the Steelers secondary in 2022-23 before joining the Raiders coaching staff to oversee safeties; returned to Pittsburgh as DBs coach in 2025.<\/p>\n<p>Alexander was part of the famous Fiesta Bowl between No. 9 Boise State and No. 7 Oklahoma, a matchup pitting two future Vikings running backs against one another in 2007 first-rounder Adrian Peterson and 2009 undrafted free agent Ian Johnson. The latter received the hand-off on the iconic &#8220;Statue of Liberty&#8221; play that scored a 2-point conversion to lift the Broncos to a 43-42 victory and 13-0 record. In the third quarter of that game, Alexander nabbed an INT, raising his college pick tally to 10.<\/p>\n<p>He recalled the bowl game in a <a class=\"nfl-o-cta--link nfl-o-cta--underline\" style=\"word-break: break-word\" href=\"https:\/\/gosycamores.com\/news\/2015\/8\/7\/210255195.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">2015 Q&amp;A article<\/a>: &#8220;It was unbelievable. When you&#8217;re caught up in the moment you don&#8217;t necessarily realize how significant of a moment it is. Me being a 21-year-old kid playing in one of the greatest college football games to ever be played, you don&#8217;t really realize that at the time.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gerald Alexander \u2014 Defensive Passing Game Coordinator\/Defensive Backs Coach Hometown: Los Angeles, California Career Path: played safety at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":726826,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2073],"tags":[7,233,259,2529,1025,1219,6,234],"class_list":{"0":"post-726825","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-vikings","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-minnesota","10":"tag-minnesota-vikings","11":"tag-minnesotavikings","12":"tag-news-index","13":"tag-news-team","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-vikings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116008059245308046","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=726825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/726826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}