Growth in the NFL isn’t often linear. Teams are always trying to build toward eventual championship windows, with the idea that they could steadily improve their record season over season until they’ve finally achieved juggernaut status. But it isn’t that simple.
Players get hurt, retire, or get too expensive. Free-agent signings or high-value picks meant to put you over the top can disappoint. Promising up-and-comers can regress.
The Vikings are facing the looming threat we’ve seen many teams hit with, most recently the division-rival Detroit Lions. Elite assistant coaches don’t stay assistants for long, and the brain drain hits your coaching staff. With Brian Flores finally getting a head coaching interview again, this feels like an inevitability.
As Minnesota bounced back to only being a well-covered kick return against Chicago away from being a Wild Card team, they did so with one of the worst offenses in the NFL. You can make all the excuses for Kevin O’Connell’s side of the ball you want: multiple backup quarterbacks, injury weirdness with your franchise left tackle, etc.
However, that doesn’t change the reality that this Vikings team was kept afloat without question by its defense. What Flores did with Minnesota’s defense in the second half of the season was nothing short of remarkable. He deserves every opportunity to be a head coach again in this league.
That doesn’t make it suck any less for Vikings fans. This season amounted to nothing other than a few moral victories by playing spoiler to a division rival and enough flashes from the young quarterback to leave you hopeful that maybe he won’t be the 32nd-best starter in the league next season. Still, hard to imagine this season one as a stepping stone to anything greater if they’re having to replace one of the sharpest defensive minds in football next season.
Just ask any Detroit Lions fan how easy it was to pass the torch from an elite playcaller down to one of his understudies on the staff. Ben Johnson orchestrated one of the NFL’s best and most creative offenses of my lifetime, and his successor, John Morton, is now updating his LinkedIn after one season holding the play sheet.
Reports from Alec Lewis at The Athletic and many others on the Vikings beat are that if/when Flores departs Minnesota, either via a head coaching opportunity or a lateral move as a part of his bizarre contract standoff, passing-game coordinator and defensive backs coach Daronte Jones would likely be his in-house successor. Jones has been speculated as a promising talent and possible Flores replacement for a while now; if Flores departs, we’ll see if there’s any substance to that speculation.
No disrespect to Jones, who has worked with Flores to do a lot with a little in Minnesota’s secondary for three seasons now. Still, amidst all the issues at cornerback the past few seasons, the Vikings have managed to put together elite defensive performances, and Jones likely deserves part of the credit for doing so with a secondary lacking several All-Pros.
But what gives me anxiety about Flores leaving is that passing down his defense isn’t as easy as handing off a playbook. I have no doubt that if Jones had to call the Vikings defense for a single game this season in Flores’ stead, he would likely have the understanding and comfort with the Flores defensive system to execute a game plan without issue. And I’m sure he could pick up the torch and run with it, going into next season if need be, at least for the opening stretch of the season.
That’s the thing about Flores, though. It’s not about executing what’s been established. It’s about masterminding the next thing that will keep opposing offensive coordinators up at night.
We’ve seen peaks and valleys for Minnesota’s defense during Flores’ tenure. In his first season, he was a madman with his hawk blitzes and sim pressures that bewildered opposing offenses, until Zach Taylor and the Cincinnati Bengals figured out how to isolate defensive tackle Harrison Phillips in coverage by cracking Flores’ blitzing rules. Peak, then valley.
But Flores followed that up by getting back in the lab and coming up with the next innovation. And no matter how many times it seemed like a weakness in his scheme had been figured out, Flores always managed to come up with a counterpunch soon after.
That’s what makes these so-called scheme gurus special. It’s not understanding what they did in the past. It’s innovating what they’re going to do next.
That innovation, creativity, and heavy sprinkling of unhinged lunacy as a play caller is what made Flores so special in his three years here. He never let himself get stale for too long, and he was always crazy enough to throw something else at the wall and see what would stick.
Credit to Kevin O’Connell and the Vikings, they always gave him the free rein to do so without meddling in his machinations. Whoever eventually succeeds Flores as Minnesota’s defensive mastermind, whether it’s someone on the staff like Daronte Jones or an outside hire off the same defensive family tree, it’ll be a tall task to replace the ingenuity and fearlessness Flores brought to the team.
