Since I cannot see the article, I found this bit from the VIkings' page:

https://www.vikings.com/team/coaches-roster/chenzo-funari

IceRatz16 wrote:

Since I cannot see the article, I found this bit from the VIkings' page:

https://www.vikings.com/team/coaches-roster/chenzo-funari

The first time I opened it, it was free. Not now. Its actually only a mildly interesting article IMO. I want to see results from all of this.

If you're on a computer you can do Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C to select all and copy it. Then paste it into word or equivalent to read it.

It's not that much of an article. You can imagine all the content and you'd be pretty much right. It's just a little bit of a background job on Chenzo Funari so you have a story to go with a new name. Loved playing football as a kid. Got injured and couldn't play anymore. Was smart so got invited to the coaching staff in high school. Went to school and became a rocket scientist, but maintained a dual love for football and rockets. Basically is a statistics guy, where he breaks down the statistical tendencies of coaches, rather than the stats of players.

So like last year, everyone knew if it's 3rd and short, you know KOC isn't going to run the ball, so you can just defend the pass. That's the type of analysis he's doing.

Good find Sticky...

Pretty cool story

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In the fall of 2015, Funari lived in the desert of Southern California as part of an internship with the aerospace company Masten Space Systems. He worked for months in a World War II-era garage.

“We went out and tested small rocket engines,” Funari, 32, said after a recent Vikings practice. “Blew stuff up.”

In those days, Funari’s sister, Taylor, periodically checked his location on her iPhone. The dot zig-zagged across areas of the American West that are not even marked on maps by city names.

“I would text him and be, like, ‘Why are you in the middle of nowhere?’” she said. “And he would reply with, ‘We’re testing. A rocket just combusted.’ And I would think to myself, ‘Is that bad? Are you OK? What does that mean?’”

Time at Masten launched Funari’s wildly impressive first career. In 2017, he helped develop an injector for a rocket at Blue Origin, a company determined to transport humans to space. In 2019, following a master’s program at Purdue, SpaceX hired him to contribute his expertise to their “Raptor” engine, intended to bring people to Mars.

Funari had arguably reached the pinnacle of a highly competitive industry before age 30. And then, in 2020, undeterred by the astonishment from colleagues and family members, he withdrew from that life entirely.

“I’ll never forget the day I got the call from him,” his mother, Kim, said. “I’m in the car, and I pick up the phone, and he goes, ‘Mom, I’m quitting my job at SpaceX to pursue football.”

This audacious decision paved the way for the present.

Funari turned a volunteer coaching opportunity at Youngstown State into a meaningful role on one of the most respected defensive staffs in the NFL. Now, staffers and players rave about his digestible understanding of schematic trends and his impact on advanced scouting reports.

His journey represents possibility and a disregard for convention. The same forces that led Funari to the Mojave Desert brought him to Minnesota. He chased his passions with intensity, only to realize along the way the one that put him most at peace.

As a child, Funari fixated on two things: space and sports.

He studied constellations. At the dinner table, he quizzed his parents on the solar system. Taylor still doesn’t know the answer to a question he’d constantly pose when he entered the living room: What is the average temperature on Mars? 

“It was like he was a walking encyclopedia,” she said.

The Cleveland native also adored the playing style of Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre. Maybe it was the fearlessness, possibly the flair. Funari practiced youth football with the gunslinger on his mind. His parents quickly recognized the sport was one of the few activities that gave his brain a break.

His mother enjoyed nothing more than watching her son, spent, plop onto the couch after another evening playing under the lights.

“As a parent, I realized that I had a profound responsibility for this kid,” Kim said. “His mind never shut off, and it brought a kind of electricity and friction into our home. Ideas sparking. Questions multiplying. His ambitions formed long before any other kid knew what that word meant. Sports, though, were where his mind went quiet.”

To his family, Funari needed the camaraderie of competition. That’s what made his torn right ACL as a ninth-grader so demoralizing.

At the pre-operation appointment for the initial repair, Funari informed his mother that his left knee also throbbed. The doctors diagnosed him with a microfracture resulting from stress applied by playing football with the torn ACL in his right knee.

He recovered from both injuries, only to tear his ACL again in his junior year. Another surgeon suggested that a reconstruction could return him to the field in eight months, but that the procedure could jeopardize his future ability to walk.

“I mean, I saw a human being’s spirit break in that room when they told us that,” Kim said. “It was so detrimental.”

Funari quit football for a season, but the high school coaches reeled him back in with a coaching assistant role. The team connectivity rekindled his love of the game.

If it weren’t for his time commitment to studying aeronautical and astronautical engineering at Ohio State, Funari would have assisted with the Buckeyes’ football program.

“As a 17-year-old, I figured the engineering degree was probably the smarter choice,” Funari said. “So, I decided to do that.”

Masten and Blue Origin gave him hands-on time with propulsion and combustion devices. He wrote code. He helped assemble products. These lessons piqued the interest of the Zucrow Laboratories at Purdue, the world’s largest academic propulsion lab.

There, as part of his studies, he assisted on a project funded by SpaceX and the Air Force.

Exposure to SpaceX earned him a full-time job with the company, where he worked on the engine for the “Starship” rocket. At the time, Funari lived in El Segundo, Calif. His sister lived in Hollywood. They planned to see each other often, but his work made that difficult.

This wore on him, and he couldn’t stop ruminating over several questions: Am I satisfied with what I’m doing? Am I bought into SpaceX’s mission the way others are? Can I live the life I want to live by continuing down this path?

While at home for Christmas that winter, he scavenged through some old pamphlets in his room and found a paper he’d written in elementary school.

“And it was, ‘What are the three things for me to have a successful life?’” Funari said. “I had written: have a family, graduate from college and be a football coach. What brought me fulfillment was the relationships with the game. I couldn’t get the thought out of my head.”

In the fall of 2020, during the pandemic, Youngstown State allowed its football staff to post a volunteer job opening. More than 100 people applied almost immediately.

“I told one of our young coaches, ‘Go through that stack of resumes, and bring me something if you see anything that catches your eye,’” Joe Schaefer, then the school’s defensive coordinator, said.

An hour later, the young coach walked into his office with a wry smile.

“I’m, like, ‘What’s so funny?’” Schaefer recalled.

He grabbed the document containing Funari’s resume.

“I knew I had to call the guy,” Schaefer said. “Like, right then and there.”

Funari accepted the phone call. They exchanged pleasantries, then Schaefer cut to the chase.

Why on earth would you do this?

Funari’s family shared the same incredulity when he first told them of his decision. However, they understood that his hunger for success pushed the boundaries of others’ beliefs, and they saw the flicker of football throughout his upbringing.

Schaefer heard the emotion in his voice. Funari validated the commitment by packing his car and arriving at the school the next day.

“As his younger sister, watching him do that fueled me so much,” Taylor said. “I had just graduated college. The job market was terrible. I wanted to work in music, and he made me feel like that was realistic. There’s nothing he does that he hasn’t thought about completely. He has this sense of knowing.”

As part of his many responsibilities at Youngstown, he analyzed data sets to gather intel on upcoming opponents. He delivered the insights in a clear, coherent way. His efficiency made it likely that he would find advantages to exploit.

Word of his influence spread throughout coaching circles. In 2022, Northern Michigan hired Funari as its running backs coach. A year later, former NFL coach Jim Mora heard about him and plucked Funari as an analyst for UConn.

“He sees the game from a different lens,” said Kenny McClendon, who coached with Funari at UConn. “He worked in the corporate sector, so he sees operations and how the building should be run in a way that’s not super chaotic.”

In his spare time, Funari studied the Miami Dolphins’ run game and compiled binders full of coaching tidbits mixed with numeric tendencies. He sent these packets to staffers around the NFL. One of them, former Vikings executive Demitrius Washington, took such an interest that the team hired Funari as a quantitative methods associate.

Not even Funari’s NFL arrival was able to box him in. He longed not to sit in an office but to collaborate with players. The analyst path introduced roadblocks to that, but once, Funari presented a report on opposing quarterbacks to the coaching staff, based on his own research.

Afterward, defensive coordinator Brian Flores visited his office with a curious facial expression. He wanted to know how Funari knew what he knew.

Hearing the entire tale convinced him in seconds. This type of thinker fit perfectly with a defensive staff willing to innovate in ways that already bordered on absurdity.

Vikings defenders couldn’t help but notice Funari.

First and foremost, he is smaller than your average NFL coach. Second, he continued to receive attention from legendary safety Harrison Smith.

“Harrison would always be turning around and asking Chenzo questions,” safety Josh Metellus said recently. “Come to find out, he’s not just this statistics dude. I didn’t realize he knew that much ball.”

Their conversations traversed from formational tells on the field to worldly news. Eventually, coaches and players pulled him aside with regularity to ask for information they believed could give them an advantage.

Beyond that, Funari’s history as an offensive coach — alongside longtime NFL quarterback Charlie Frye — offered a different perspective for the Vikings defensive staff during game planning.

That was one of Funari’s responsibilities as a quality-control coach in 2025. It has persisted, even with his newest title as assistant defensive backs coach.

Athletic

“It’s more than defense to him and to them,” Kim said. “It’s chess. And I think Brian has really been able to show him that defense is just as schematic and creative. Which, for a kid like him, could not be any better.”

She, Taylor and the entire family cannot wait to attend the Week 1 opener against Green Bay. They know they won’t hear from him in the lead-up. They acknowledge he will be in the matrix, doing everything he can to provide an edge.

But they also cannot wait until afterward. When they’ll meet up with him, when he’ll plop down after a night under the lights with a clear mind and satisfaction.

The most impressive mission yet? Accomplished.

This intellectual nerd sounds a bit more pragmatic than the last one the Vikings had. He may actually help the team instead of hindering them!

I always have a soft spot for intellectuals, nerds and independent thinkers. I was excited about hiring Kwesi and his analytical approach at the time. Unfortunately that approach of seeking value first in the draft backfired and was anything but a value.

This guy seems to have tools to be helpful. Just don't promote him to GM!