How Brian Flores is Maximizing Dallas Turner

Through three weeks, Minnesota Vikings’ edge rusher Dallas Turner leads the NFL in pressures. This is true across stat platforms: PFF has him first with 24 pressures, NFL Pro (via NextGenStats) has him first with 25, Pro-Football-Reference (via Sportradar) has him first with 19, and SumerSports also has him tied for first with Gregory Rousseau at 25. So far, Turner has converted those pressures into 3.5 sacks, which is t-4th in the NFL.

The 2026 season has been a breakout for third-year Turner, whom the team put its faith in after trading Jonathan Greenard to the Philadelphia Eagles this past offseason. Despite the high pressure numbers, there’s been a lot of discourse about whether or not Turner is actually playing that well. This probably started with Turner’s week 2 PFF grade, which was abnormally low for someone with his 11 total pressures and 2 sacks.

You can find discussion of the fraught nature of individual game PFF grades elsewhere on this website, but the discrepancy was large enough that PFF alumni Steve Palazzolo and Sam Monson re-graded the game on their show using their experience with that grading system.

Trench Warfare’s Brandon Thorn and Audibles and Analytics’ Jon Ledyard, both of whom I really respect as evaluators of trench play (author’s note: notably, Arif also had Jon on Norse Code to preview the Bucs’ game, although I would argue Arif usually does not respect the people he podcasts with), also jumped into the conversation on Twitter.

The conversations above point towards the realities of the situation. So far this season, Turner has consistently racked up the pressures, but he’s had many opportunities where he’s either unblocked or matched up against a lesser blocker, like a tight end, compared to some other players at the position who are constantly facing opposing offensive tackles. 

However, as @Krauserrific points out in the second conversation, Turner gets so many of those pressures because he’s consistently being put in those situations.

The Vikings’ defensive architect, Brian Flores, is blitzing at unprecedented levels, and that has naturally led to easier matchups for Turner. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t had chances for “High Quality” pressures, but he most likely has fewer opportunities than other edge rushers because of the defense he’s playing in.

Given that, it’s worth investigating both how Turner is earning his pressures and how he’s performing against OTs, the type of competition most other edge rushers often face. I studied each of Turner’s pass-rush attempts, charting the pressures and some other wins. Let’s dive into how he’s getting it done.

I categorized Turner’s 25 pressures from NFLPro. 

He has 8 unblocked pressures. In this sample, I included plays where he was virtually unblocked because of offensive mistakes, as well as the half sack Turner got against the Bucs, where he actually had a coverage assignment but chased down Baker on a scramble. 

The below is an example of a schemed-up, unblocked pressure that anyone could have gotten, as the Bears left him unblocked. This kind of pressure should be credited to Brian Flores, who created a difficult protection situation for the Bears. 

They chose to half slide to the left to pick up the three rushers to that side, leaving the back side guard and tackle to block four potential rushers in Blake Cashman, Eric Wilson, Turner, and Harrison Smith. Cashman and Wilson are the most dangerous, since they’re closest to QB Caleb Williams, and when they step forward, both blockers go to meet them. Caleb has two potential hot options on the play if there is an unblocked rusher, but Cashman is executing a “tag” rush that deters the underneath route by TE Colston Loveland and Smith dropping into coverage takes away WR Rome Odunze.

Turner has certainly benefited from the Vikings’ pressure design; not all of the unblocked pressures were freebies. In particular, Turner’s athleticism has shone through, and he’s avoided blocks where other, slower players might get caught. 

On the play below, he has a natural advantage: he’s aligned very wide, and the Packers are, for some reason, asking their RG to expand all the way out to block him. This is a tough assignment, but Turner also has to navigate significant traffic to get there. Turner works through and fluidly chases Love to force him to dirt the ball.

Turner’s forced fumble in the Packers’ game is a similar example. On this play, the TE screws up and impacts right tackle Zach Bako-Bewele, so both are late to their spot, and neither can touch Turner, who turns the corner and sacks Love. But Turner was so fast off the ball that he was 4 yards into the backfield by the time Love faked a handoff.

Turner is also frequently succeeding on stunts. On the play below, he gets inside and hits Love very quickly, before running back Chris Brooks can recover. Flores deserves some credit here, as he forced the protection to leave and the RB to pair up with an LT to pick up a stunt, which is a very difficult task. Brooks overcommits and does a poor job picking up the stunt, but Turner was also fast enough to make an impact.

Certainly, Turner is benefiting from unblocked pressures. But his athleticism also lets him take full advantage of them. Why not both?

After the unblocked pressures, 6 pressures came while Turner was rushing against TEs. 

On those reps, Turner consistently won with a bull rush. Baker Mayfield ducked out of a sack on this play, but Turner walked TE Payne Durham right into his lap.

Turner was able to consistently beat whichever TE he went up against, which included some of the league’s better blockers at the position, Tucker Kraft and Cole Kmet. Here he is winning inside against Kraft:

And here he bull rushes straight through Kmet:

The play below is another situation where Turner’s athleticism comes in handy. The Bears are running a pretty typical play-action protection, with Kmet trying to cut Turner and Colston Loveland trying to block him on split-zone action. Turner completely sidesteps Kmet’s block, then quickly disengages from Loveland to sack Caleb. Jalen Redmond had a big hand in the sack, forcing Williams to step up in the pocket, but Turner was only in position to make the sack because he sidestepped Kmet.

Certainly, Brian Flores plays a role in creating these advantageous matchups. This is evident in the play below, Turner’s walkoff sack against the Bears. On the play, the Vikings have four potential rushers on the left side of the offensive line, with Turner furthest outside:

This leaves the Bears between a rock and a hard place, protection-wise. They could ask left tackle Braxton Jones to get all the way out to Turner, but if they do, they risk what happened to the Packers earlier — if Jones can’t get out there in time, Turner would be virtually unblocked. So they let Loveland match up one-on-one with Turner, and that also proves to be a big mistake. Turner bull rushes right through Loveland and consumes QB Tyson Bagent to end the game.

The threat of additional pass rushers is constant for offenses when facing the Vikings, and it forces difficult offensive protection problems like the one above.

Obviously, the Vikings consistently play with linebackers mugged up on the line of scrimmage, but even when they want Cashman and Wilson to cover, they’ll have them act like threats pre-snap. We’ll come back to this play for pass-rush reasons, but for now, just watch Cashman and Wilson pre-snap. 

They start at the line of scrimmage, then drop back to more depth. This forces the Packers to adjust their protection (you can see the LT and LG raise their hands to signal 5-0 protection) and gets Turner a one-on-one matchup. If you count CB Byron Murphy, angled inside and threatening a corner (“cat”) blitz because of the condensed formation, the Vikings have 8 pass-rush threats.

Contrast that look with the Mike Zimmer-era Vikings. Zimmer was a fantastic defensive coach in his own right and pioneered many of the mug looks the Vikings use, but it wasn’t his base defense, which looked more like the one below. On the play below, the Vikings realistically have 4 pass rush threats, maybe 5 if you include LB Eric Kendricks. Wilson is far enough off the ball that he doesn’t impact the protection. The Cowboys can half slide to Kendricks and feel protected easily.

In going through the tape, I counted how many potential rush threats the Vikings had on each pressure. They never had fewer than 5 on a play and averaged 6.5 pass-rush threats, including 14 plays where they threatened 7 or 8 rushers.

That’s really helping Turner get advantageous matchups, but he’s also making the most of them. Turner consistently won his matchups against lesser blockers. I have 17 reps charted where a TE or RB was his primary blocker. In my opinion, he won 11 of those matchups.

Sometimes, a pressure gets charted by a different service that doesn’t seem like a pressure to me. There were 7 plays where Turner was credited with a pressure that I don’t think were really pass rush wins.