Marquis Johnson enters his sixth season on the Minnesota Vikings strength and conditioning staff in 2026 as an assistant player performance coach, beginning his eigth year in the NFL.
In 2025, Johnson helped plan and execute a 10-day international road trip to Dublin, Ireland, and London, England, as the Vikings became the first NFL team to play back-to-back games in two different countries. Alongside the player health and performance team, Johnson helped successfully transition football operations overseas, maintaining the standards of care and support players received during a typical game week.
Johnson played a key role in the Vikings strength staff receiving a resounding stamp of approval when the NFL Players Association released the results of its "free agency report cards" during each of the past three offseasons (2023-25). The staff earned an A+ grade in 2023, tying for the top spot among all strength staffs league wide. In 2024, Johnson was part of the NFL's highest-ranked staff, earning an A, and in 2025, Minnesota's strength coaches were second out of all 32 teams, also receiving an A. The 2025 report card stated, "100% of players report that they get an individualized training plan from their strength coaching staff, one of just three teams in the league with a perfect score."
Johnson is a certified strength and conditioning coach through the NSCA as well as through the Collegiate Strength & Conditioning Association. Throughout his career, he has utilized progressive sports science technologies such as StatSports GPS Tracking and helped facilitate various individualized recovery strategies. He continues to push the envelope and is familiar with a variety of methods to enhance strength, power, speed and agility.
Prior to arriving in Minnesota, Johnson served as an assistant strength and conditioning coach at Jackson State in 2020. He was named coordinator of strength & performance in February 2019 at the University of Houston after two seasons with the San Francisco 49ers (2017-18) as a strength & conditioning assistant. He joined the 49ers after serving as an assistant strength coach at the University of Tennessee in 2016.
Johnson joined Tennessee's athletic department after stops in Texas as the head strength coach at Memorial (Port Arthur) High School (2014-16), West Brook (Beaumont) High School (2012-14) and Galena Park (Texas) High School (2010-12). In addition to his strength & conditioning duties, Johnson worked with defensive backs, defensive linemen and outside linebackers in football, as well as the school's powerlifting programs.
Before his time in the high school ranks, Johnson spent two academic years (2008-10) at Eastern Michigan, where he began as a graduate assistant and later moved to the school's interim head strength & conditioning coach. In addition to football at EMU, Johnson worked with the school's men's and women's basketball teams, golf, tennis and soccer teams. While at Eastern Michigan, he earned his master's degree in administration.
A native of Houston, Texas, Johnson played collegiately at Prairie View A&M (2004-08) where he began as a tight end before moving to defensive end. His younger brother, Jerrod, was the Vikings assistant quarterbacks coach in 2022 and now serves as senior offensive analyst/special projects for the head coach for the Philadelphia Eagles following three seasons as the quarterbacks coach of the Houston Texans (2023-25). He received his bachelor's degree in human performance from Prairie View A&M.
