The Anti-Flores Idea Percolating Within NFL Analysis
Brian Flores is well-known as a blitzing specialist. Indeed, a major part of his brilliance rests in his ability to create havoc before and after the snap with his willingness to be ultra aggressive.
Lately, though, a different idea has been getting a lot of love: not blitzing at all. After all, that’s what the Philadelphia Eagles did in the Super Bowl. Relying on just the front four to generate pressure allowed the Eagles to drop seven men into coverage, clogging passing lanes in the process. Even better, the four rushers still found a way to get home. Is the anti-Flores approach something the Vikings will be sprinkling into their game plan for 2025?
The Anti-Flores Idea and The Super Bowl
During the offseason, I made a prediction: the Minnesota Vikings were going to blitz less.
Consider the opening idea: “By definition, blitzing is a classic situation of stealing from Peter to pay for Paul. Yes, there’s upside in adding another pass rusher(s) to the mix, but the downside is that there’s now less attention being given to pass coverage. In a lot of ways, then, the gold standard in the NFL is being able to generate pressure with four men. The Vikings’ next step may involve pursuing that precise objective.”
Crunch the numbers a bit and that prediction ended up aging reasonably well. Yet again, the Vikings led the NFL in blitzing, but there was a large drop off from 2023 to 2024. Flores’ debut season involved blitzing 51.5% of the time; the encore season involved blitzing 38.9% of the time. So, a strong drop off.
Maybe the main factor in being able to send less blitzers rests in the increased talent along the defensive front. Having all of Jonathan Greenard, Andrew Van Ginkel, Patrick Jones II, Dallas Turner, and Jihad Ward made it more viable to get to a quarterback with just four players.
Most encouraging is that the Vikings had a better defense. The 2023 Vikings allowed an average of 21.3 points against per game, good for 13th in the NFL. The 2024 Vikings allowed an average of 19.5 points per game, good for 5th in the NFL.
Brian Flores tweaked his strategy, sending a blitzer less often because he had enough talent to do so. What happens if he actually gets a penetrating defensive tackle/end? Do the blitzes drop off even more in 2025?
In the Super Bowl, the Eagles flustered Patrick Mahomes. No easy feat, but one that was possible largely due to only sending their defensive line after the league’s best quarterback.
On The Athletic, there was a consideration of the strategy: “Philadelphia sacked Patrick Mahomes a career-high six times on Sunday night — becoming the eighth team in Super Bowl history with at least six sacks — all without blitzing once. According to Next Gen Stats, there was a point in the third quarter where the defense generated a dazzling 52.4 percent pressure rate against Mahomes without sending more than four pass rushers.”
Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni commented on the approach: “‘So we didn’t need pressures at all [in the Super Bowl]. We were getting home with four and being able to keep seven in coverage.'”
At the end of the day, Brian Flores isn’t going to change who he is and nor should he. The defensive coordinator is a great tactician who finds success largely due to his willingness to be aggressive. He may adjust the blitzing frequency but he seems supremely unlikely to outright eliminate it.
The point is simply that continuing to give the defensive coordinator improved personnel up front would be a nice step for the Vikings. Flores wants options, the capacity to throw different things at an offense. Being unpredictable and tough to decipher are key parts of Flores’ defensive recipe, so having the potential to be disruptive with just four players is an objective that Minnesota should be pursuing.
Currently, the team is working with roughly $58 million in cap space.
Editor’s Note: Information from Pro Football Reference and Over the Cap helped with this piece.
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K. Joudry is the Senior Editor for Vikings Territory and PurplePTSD. He has been covering the Vikings full time since the summer of 2021. He can be found on Twitter, as a co-host for Notes from the North, and as the proprietor at The Vikings Gazette, a humble Vikings Substack.