Chenzo Funari’s career has taken him from aerospace engineering to the sidelines of Minnesota Vikings games. Now the team’s assistant defensive backs coach, he once worked on rockets at SpaceX. His move into football coaching was a major change—not only for Funari and his family, but also for the Vikings, who had to consider an unusual applicant with a background in the space industry.
When Funari submitted his coaching résumé, he recalled, the response was essentially: “Who is this crazy guy that was working at SpaceX?”
His path began in the Cleveland area, where he grew up playing for local teams. Several serious knee injuries, along with his height of 5 feet 5 inches, limited his opportunities as a player. Instead of leaving football behind, he began coaching as a student assistant. Even so, aerospace soon became another powerful interest.
Funari had long wanted to work at SpaceX, drawn to the company’s reputation and its place in the industry. He described it as “the NFL of aerospace”—a goal that would take him far from the football field.
In the fall of 2015, he moved to the Southern California desert for an internship with Masten Space Systems. The work meant spending months in a garage left over from World War II, amid the region’s intense heat. That early experience began a period of work in the aerospace sector. Funari later joined Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, before eventually reaching SpaceX, the company he had hoped to work for.
At SpaceX, he worked on the Raptor engine, designed for missions to Mars. The role was a significant achievement in a field he had pursued with determination. But even as his aerospace career advanced, football remained part of his life—and eventually drew him back.
Funari’s mother, Kim, remembers the day he told her he planned to leave SpaceX.
“I’ll never forget the day I got the call from him,” she 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.’”
Kim supported his decision. Funari recalled that she embraced the idea with the familiar reminder that “you only live once.” His father, by contrast, was skeptical, but Funari had made up his mind.
Returning to football meant starting near the bottom of the coaching ladder. In 2020, he joined Youngstown State as a volunteer, assisting with the defensive backs. By the 2022 offseason, he had moved into offensive quality control and worked with the tight ends.
His next coaching stops were Northern Michigan and Connecticut. In 2024, he joined Minnesota as a football quantitative methods associate. The Vikings finished that season with a 14–3 record. The following year, Funari became a defensive quality control coach, while the team finished 9–8. He later moved into his current role as assistant defensive backs coach. At the point described, Minnesota had a 6–2 record.
Head coach Kevin O’Connell has praised Funari’s ability to bring a distinctive way of thinking to the team. O’Connell described him as someone who sometimes pauses to work out how to explain a complex idea in a way that makes sense to others. He called Funari “our genius” and said the team would use that quality as a superpower.
Funari’s engineering education helps explain why his career has spanned such different fields. He holds degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering, and his experience working on advanced rocket technology is unusual among NFL coaches. Yet his height, which once limited his playing prospects, has not kept him from contributing to football in another way.
Asked to choose between space and football as his first love, Funari chose football. His route from aerospace internships to the Vikings’ coaching staff was far from conventional, but it brought together two interests he had pursued at different points in his life. From working on a rocket engine intended for Mars to helping coach Minnesota’s defensive backs, Funari has built a career that does not fit the usual path into professional football.
