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Kevin Seifert, ESPN Staff Writer
EAGAN, Minn. — Kirk Cousins heard about the Minnesota Vikings‘ new defensive coordinator in February via text from an NFL friend.
“You guys hired Coach Flores.”
Cousins texted right back.
“Training camp is going to get tough.”
The quarterback’s response has proved prophetic. He and the Vikings’ offense are in Week 5 of what coach Kevin O’Connell calls the “Brian Flores Experience,” a summer of navigating an unpredictable defense that is difficult to practice against. It has led to some “tense conversations” in offensive meetings, Cousins said, as the team watches film of practice reps that had little chance to succeed against the defense as called — even amid the hope that it will generate a long-term benefit on both sides of the ball.
“If you were playing him for that week, you would run a very different offense, a very different system, have a very different plan to handle the challenges he’s throwing at you,” Cousins said. “But if you just prepared to play him, are you really getting ready for the Buccaneers in Week 1 and the rest of your schedule? So, we’ve kind of had to live in that world of, ‘We’re going to call the plays that we’re going to need for the season, that are going to make life very difficult [for the offense] against his scheme, and we just have to do our best to find the answers that are there, even if it’s a tough answer.’
“And so that’s the world we’re living in and it makes us better in the long run. … you kind of have the big picture in mind and I think all-in-all it’s been good for our development as a player and as an offense.”
Flores’ scheme has been as advertised: blitz-heavy with large doses of man-to-man defense. But that isn’t what has made life for difficult for Cousins and the Vikings’ offense. Even when he hasn’t called a traditional blitz, for instance, Flores floods the line of scrimmage with defenders who are threatening one.
Those players can line up in unusual positions — an outside linebacker in a three-point stance over the center, for instance, with a safety filling in for him on the edge — to enhance confusion. The chaos extends to the defensive backfield, where receiver Justin Jefferson said he sees “a lot of coverages you don’t think is that coverage, but they do a lot of switching it up and disguising.”
“It’s a competitive camp,” Flores told ESPN. “We’re trying to stop them. They’re trying to score. They’re trying to get first downs. We’re trying to get off the field. I think from that standpoint, you can never really get away from that. I don’t think [O’Connell] wants us to get away from that. I certainly don’t. We just try to get together and all get better.
“[O’Connell] and I have had that conversation. They’re giving us enough looks. We’re giving them enough looks, and hopefully we work together and get the players what they need. As they say, ‘Together we eat.'”
After fielding a decidedly passive defense last season with former defensive coordinator Ed Donatell, O’Connell was determined to find a replacement who would raise the intensity and aggressiveness. O’Connell said earlier in camp that he feels “really good about just the alignment of our schemes and our playcallers in all three phases,” and said he was getting exactly what he wanted from Flores’ approach, even if it adds a layer to his work as the Vikings’ offensive playcaller and schematic architect.
One vexing byproduct of that decision has been an unusually high number of practice reps that end without full execution of the play. The quarterback might simply hold the ball or throw it away, or take off running. Or, in some cases, a running back might slam into a gap that the offense had little chance to block.
“We’re calling plays that if they get in certain looks, I’m kind of palms-upping the coaches,” Cousins said. “Like, ‘What do you want me to do here? You didn’t give me as many tools in the tool belt that I’d like to have.'”
The Vikings have gradually added some additional checks and responses to Flores’ variety of calls, Cousins said, leading to some high-level back-and-forth at the line of scrimmage. Linebacker Jordan Hicks, safety Harrison Smith and defensive lineman Harrison Phillips all have the authority to make real-time checks based on the offense’s formation and personnel, Flores said. Cousins said “it kind of becomes who holds the pen last” as the play clock winds down.
Ultimately, Cousins is following the advice former Vikings offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak once gave for handling blitz-heavy schemes: Sometimes you have to let the defense win the play to avoid losing the game.
“So if I get a free runner,” Cousins said, “or we didn’t quite get the protection targeted correctly before the snap, that’s fine. You win that down. I’m throwing it in the dirt. But I’m not going to let you win the game. I’m not going to have a sack-fumble. I’m not going to throw a pick. I’m not going to do that thing that you’ll look back and say, ‘That’s why we lost.’ So there’s a little bit of practice where I have to let Flo win the play or even win the series, but I can’t let him win the game, if you will.
“But believe me, there have been a few practices where I come in and I say, ‘I don’t think we won that practice. I think Flo won that practice.’ So it’s a good challenge.”
It’s a good challenge in the way eating raw kale benefits long-term health. As unpleasant as it might be in the moment, those “losses” could prove beneficial if they give the Vikings a bigger inventory of checks to use against unscouted looks during the regular season.
In turn, the Vikings’ offense has provided a high-octane experimental partner this summer for Flores, who has already scrapped some alignments he didn’t like and is practicing everything in the playbook. It’s highly unlikely any one Vikings opponent will see the volume of looks that their own offense has seen this summer. Hicks, in fact, said: “I’m excited to see what a true game plan will look like.”
It wasn’t until last week’s joint practices with the Tennessee Titans that some offensive players realized the full impact of the “Brian Flores Experience” — as well as the first sign of its potential benefits.
“Flo’s defense is so tricky,” Jefferson said, “that it makes every other defense more recognizable. Not having so many pressures, not having so many disguises, it’s definitely easier to read what kind of coverage [opponents] are in.”
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