The Xs and Os: Vikings’ defense will be far more aggressive under Brian Flores
Brian Flores is one of the NFL’s foremost proponents of the zero blitz, which will be a big change for the team. Under Ed Donatell last season, Minnesota sent six or more pass-rushers on the third-fewest passing attempts, ahead of only the Rams and Jets. And only the Seahawks played fewer Cover-0 snaps than the Vikings did last season. So, when we look at the Vikings’ defensive personnel, how does that work?
Overall, the 2021 Dolphins played the NFL’s eighth-most single-high coverage, the NFL’s lowest rate of two-high, and they had the league’s highest blitz rate. Flores wasn’t with the Dolphins last season, but defensive coordinator Josh Boyer was basically running a Flores defense. 38% of their defensive snaps had a blitz, and there will be multiple fronts – 3-4-4 as base and 3-3-5 as the nickel, hut there should be all kinds of stuff. They added Marcus Davenport and Dean Lowry to the front, though losing Dalvin Tomlinson to the Browns is a big hit.
Outside of Harrison Phillips, the secondary is still a major question. The addition of Byron Murphy could be helpful if they get the good version of Murphy, but this seems like a defense that will have to be a lot about scheme until the execution catches up.
In this week’s episode of “The Xs and Os with Greg Cosell,” Greg gets into why Donatell’s schemes were a problem, and what Flores will do to fix it in the context of a defense that is still under development:
“You’re going to see schemed pressure, which you did not see at all under Ed Donatell. Nor did you see a lot of versatility on the back end in how they played. They did not play a ton of different coverage concepts. They played a ton of two-shell… I hate to use the word ‘soft,’ because Ed Donatell would never think, ‘Oh, we played soft,’ But they didn’t do a lot of different things. My guess is, opposing offenses felt that they were not very difficult to scheme against.
“They’ve got some questions in terms of personnel on defense, though. Especially at cornerback. [We’ll see] how Brian Flores feels about playing with a lot of pressure — which he likes to do; he’s an aggressive guy by nature — when your cornerbacks are unproven.”
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