A Boise State coach spent a week with the LA Rams. Here’s what he learned
One of college football’s top young coaches is returning to Boise State this summer with a week of NFL coaching experience in his back pocket.
Boise State run game coordinator and edge coach Jabril Frazier spent the first week of June in Southern California with the Los Angeles Rams as a recipient of the Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellowship.
“I definitely learned a lot,” Frazier told the Idaho Statesman in an interview Tuesday. “I thought that was the best thing I could do in my career right now.”
It may seem to Boise State fans that Frazier is a seasoned veteran of the coaching staff, given that he’s been a member of it in some capacity since 2020. He’s been around the program for even longer, featuring as a linebacker and edge for the Broncos from 2014-18.
But he’s only 28 years old, and just last year was named to the 247Sports 30Under30 list as one of the best college football coaches younger than 30. In his first two years as the edge coach for the Broncos, he helped build Ahmed Hassanein and Jayden Virgin-Morgan into all-conference first-team selections, with the former going on to be selected in the sixth round of the 2025 NFL Draft.
But this isn’t the first time that Frazier has garnered attention from the NFL. He’d already received Bill Walsh Fellowship offers from the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks, but never followed through on the opportunity to focus on Boise State instead.
That was almost the case this time around, too, if not for a man who always seems to pop up around the program: Chris Petersen.
Petersen, an iconic coach who was at Boise State in some capacity from 2001 to 2013 — the last eight of those years as head coach — never personally coached Frazier. But whenever Coach Pete returned to town, Frazier said that Petersen would always “pour into” him.
And so it was Petersen who pushed Frazier into taking the opportunity this time around.
“He must have seen something right, and he’s always on me about the little details,” Frazier said. “... The last three years, he’s been a huge mentor for me, sitting in my meeting rooms and giving me input.”
So what did Frazier learn, and what will he bring back to Boise State?
He said he spent a lot of time with Rams outside linebackers coach Joe Coniglio and watched that group go through team meetings, individual workouts and team periods. He also spent some time in defensive line meetings and specifically with the defensive tackles.
He was even taking notes on how Los Angeles head coach Sean McVay approached meetings and training sessions, so he could tell BSU coach Spencer Danielson about them.
But with all that was happening, it wasn’t a specific drill or physical thing that Frazier found most enlightening — it was how coaches approached players, and how coaching was an “open conversation.”
“I think at (the college) level, sometimes the coaches can be like, ‘This is my way and no other way,’” Frazier said. “And at (the NFL) level, you’re in a partnership, you’re trying to make those guys better at their craft. ... I think where my room is, we’ve now got a couple of older guys where I can do that.”
Frazier described the vibe as meeting players halfway, to the point of agreeing on which individual workouts they should do that day, rather than the coach simply deciding.
But Frazier also said not to get things twisted — the NFL players are still coached “extremely hard,” to the point that it shocked him.
“They meet them in the middle, but if something’s not right, they’re gonna let them know to their face it’s not right,” Frazier said. “If the details aren’t right, they let them know.”
That’s the kind of mentality Boise State’s edge rushing group for the 2026 season should expect. Virgin-Morgan returns as one of the premier defenders in the new Pac-12 Conference, while defensive ends like senior Max Stege and redshirt sophomore Roman Caywood will look to take big steps forward.
The standard within Frazier’s group is already high, and with this new experience in hand, he looks to raise it even higher in 2026.
“I’m intense in meetings to walk-through to practice, but I think I just want those guys to feel the urgency,” Frazier said. “It’s a position that a coach has to have an edge about yourself. ... (The players) will probably say that I’m a little over the top at times, but I do it in a loving way.”
