To anyone under 40, this is going to sound insane. However, those with four or more decades under their belt will know exactly what I’m talking about when I say that, back in the ‘90s, there was a brief, hugely popular trend called Magic Eye posters.
Magic Eye posters were the height of mall art for a couple of (glorious?) years. They were posters, available at kiosks between the Baskin Robins and the Waldenbooks, placed right next to the Far Side day planners and 12 Months Of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit calendars. At first glance, a Magic Eye image looked like an insane jumble of pixels, fractal patterns of rainbow-colored TV static. But if you stared at them long enough and slightly unfocused your vision, those pixels would scramble into a 3-D, hologram-style image, usually of something like the Statue of Liberty or a dolphin leaping out of the sea.
This was mall art, remember, not the treasures of the Louvre.
It’s tough to overstate how insanely prevalent these Magic Eye posters were, once upon a time when Bill Clinton was still debating the specific meaning of the word “is.” (Again, this all happened. You can Google it.) If you didn’t get one of these gaudy-looking posters for Christmas, somebody at your holiday gathering did, and it got passed around O Tanenbaum for everyone in the family to gaze at, stupefied.
At this point, the legacy of Magic Eye posters is best remembered for a great Seinfeld episode when Elaine’s boss, Mr. Pitt, shirked his corporate duties in an obsessive quest to see the hidden picture. I sympathize with Mr. Pitt. I could never make heads or tails of the damn things either, no matter how hard I tried.
But a lot of people could. And Brian Flores’ defense might just be a Magic Eye poster: puzzling to some, but easily solved once you get the hang of it.
Flores’ defense relies heavily on motion, confusion, and all-around trickery. Kathy Bates’ character from The Waterboy might call it “foosball hoodoo.” All those chaotic shifts and kooky looking alignments absolutely baffle opposing offensive coordinators. At first, anyway. But plenty of people, if they stare at it long enough, can crack the code. And once you see it, you can’t un-see it.
We have more than a little proof of this.
Last season, the frustrating, up-and-down, eventually Kirk-less Minnesota Vikings at least had Flores’ avant-garde defensive schemes to rely on. Through the first 15 weeks, Minnesota’s D held all but one opponent, the Philadelphia Eagles, to under 30 points — in most cases significantly less than that. This dazzling performance peaked with a game in which they blanked the Las Vegas Raiders, winning by a paltry field goal, 3-0. During that stretch, the Vikings were allowing opponents about 19 points per game.
But in Week 13, Zac Taylor’s Cincinnati Bengals, with a defense led by coordinator Lou Anarumo, seemed to figure them out. The Bengals still only scored 27 points, enough to best the Vikes in overtime. Still, the blueprint was revealed. Minnesota ceded 30 or more points in the next three games and just didn’t look the same. They didn’t pass the eye test.
Again this season, Minnesota’s defense got off to a white-hot start. At least, that is, until Dan Campbell’s feisty Detroit Lions, with an offense dreamed up by guru Ben Johnson, clearly had their number. Johnson deployed an extra running back or tight end to assist with the blocking to buy a laser-focused Jared Goff just a little more time to absolutely carve up the Vikings.
Of course, Detroit is a formidable foe. There’s no shame in losing a close one to the Motor City Kitties in 2024. But this week, the Los Angeles Rams seemed to take a lesson from that blueprint and bully the Flores defense. The Vikings surrendered 30 points in the loss (although the last two did come from the safety against the offense, and yes, that was a facemask, but still).
Maybe this is a blip on the radar. And of course the absence of Blake Cashman is huge, and his return will definitely give them a boost. It certainly helps that Minnesota’s schedule for the next few weeks is highly favorable, which should put them in poll position to rack up several more wins. But one has to wonder, is this defense essentially solved? Even if the Vikings can still overcome middling opponents, will more talented, better-coached teams follow that blueprint and keep Minnesota working off their back foot for the remainder of this once-promising season? Or can Flores reconfigure this chaos into something more confounding that you can’t suss out just by squinting right and knowing how to look?
Flores has an extra-long week to retool. He couldn’t regain his balance at the tail end of last season. Now, of course, he has a savvier, hand-picked group of players. But they may be unable to make a difference against good teams who have learned to blur their eyes and look just right.
The following week or two is going to be a massive test for the Vikings at large and Flores specifically. They must prove that his befuddling defense remains difficult to fully understand and is not just a piece of coded visual chaos you can suss out while you munch on a Cinnabon from the food court.
