Marquis Johnson enters his third season on the Vikings strength and conditioning staff in 2024 as an assistant strength and conditioning coach and fifth year in the NFL. Johnson was a part of the 2022 Vikings team that finished 13-4 and claimed the NFC North title. Prior to Minnesota, he most recently served as an assistant strength and conditioning coach at Jackson State in 2020.
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.
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 the quarterbacks coach of the Texans. He received his bachelor's degree in human performance from Prairie View A&M.
