Nobody Can Figure Out Brian Flores: 5 Plans That Didn't Beat The Blitz

Hey, did you know that Brian Flores has blitzed a lot? You hear about this? They blitz enough to make NFL history. Not sure if you heard.

Now that we’re a few games into this experiment, it’s clear the Vikings intend not just to use the blitz, but to live in it. To make it a lifestyle. As of the bye week, their blitz rate is at 78.5%, per PFF.

Normal teams might blitz on 3rd downs or longer down-and-distance situations, where the offense has fewer options to beat the blitz. But not the Vikings. Per Trumedia, the Vikings blitz 70.1% of the time on first and second down.

Think about that from an offensive staffer’s perspective for a second. Say you are an advance scout for a future Vikings opponent, and you’re trying to help build an offensive menu. 

Every play you install has a better chance of being blitzed than not. That means that every play you plan to call has to have a solid blitz-beating plan, and those blitz-beating plans need to themselves summate into a complete offense.

Through five games, nobody has accomplished this. The Vikings defense is on pace to make another kind of NFL history. Four of the Vikings’ first five opponents posted season lows in completion percentage, and the one that didn’t (Tyler Shough) set his season low in passing yards. 

It’s not like the Vikings have played a series of subpar offensive minds. Matt LaFleur is the winningest active head coach in the NFL. Ben Johnson just won coach of the year. Kellen Moore, Zac Robinson and Bobby Slowik were getting hype as the next young phenoms as early as a year or two ago.

Each of them brought their own distinct gameplans, reflective of their style, to try and pick up the blitz and punish Flores for his aggression.

It all went to hell.

The Vikings ask your offense a simple question: How many players are you blocking with? Will you stick to the five offensive linemen and leverage five eligibles against depleted coverage? Or will you add blockers, try to pick up the blitz, and try to win downfield with fewer routes? What do you usually do? And do you want to change it?

Generally, teams bring more blockers to their Vikings game, for reasons I’m sure you can intuit. 

Teams bring less than half as much 5-man protection to their Vikings game as they do to other games. Think about the implications of this. Offenses designed to progress across five eligibles to stress coverages are losing access to those concepts and settling for simpler four-, three-, or even two-man concepts. As Blake Cashman put it, “limiting the offense’s menu”. 

As an offensive staffer, the challenge morphs. Instead of getting the ball to one of five against standard seven-man coverages, you’re getting two or three open against five- or six-man coverages. It’s a different arena.

Put another way, teams are accepting that they have to play on Flores’ terms.

Not every team has been as willing to accept this sacrifice as the next. Separated by team, you can see some teams stayed more stubborn than others in terms of keeping their route runners running routes.

The Packers and Saints almost entirely abandoned five-man protections. The Dolphins ran a healthy mix in a short offensive day, while the Bears and Buccaneers tried to stay closer to their usual distributions. 

Each gameplan was its own beast, making them all useful examples of the basic categories of pass protection, and how those categories can fail under the weight of Flores’ relentless strategy.

The Dolphins ran only 20 dropbacks in their game against Minnesota, so their protection distribution isn’t particularly conclusive. Rather, they provide a good example of the standard approach to pass protection that any NFL offense executes. 

The general idea is that the center has to sort out the defense and communicate assignments to the rest of the line. The quarterback can make adjustments from time to time, but the center is driving the boat from down to down. 

Watch just the pre-snap on this play. Aaron Brewer communicates a call to each fellow lineman, who passes it down the line. 

Brewer might genuinely be the best player on the Dolphins, so trusting him to sort all this out may make sense for an 0-5 team without much else going on. So, how does he want to handle this look? 

Seven Vikings are on the line of scrimmage, but they don’t all count the same. The “bigs,” a.k.a. defensive linemen and pass-rushing linebackers like Dallas Turner and Andrew Van Ginkel, get priority. From there, the line has a covered/uncovered system to determine who does what.

Brewer has labeled one of the Vikings’ linebackers as the “Mike” and is communicating that call down the line. That determines who everyone else on the line blocks, so pass the message on.

In this case, he’s declared the “Mike” on the left side, which means we count from left to right. Because left tackle Patrick Paul has Dallas Turner to his outside, he’s covered. Left guard Kadyn Proctor has Levi Drake Rodrigues to his left, so he’s covered. 

Aaron Brewer doesn’t have any bigs to his left (remember, Blake Cashman doesn’t count), so he’s uncovered. The uncovered player starts the “slide,” which encompasses everyone else down the line.

Blake Cashman and Harrison Smith will be the running back’s job if they rush. If both rush, he’ll pick the most dangerous, and the quarterback will be “Hot,” meaning he has to beat the blitz with a quick pass.

These rules are typically referred to as “Jet” protection. 

Several adjustments within the Jet system can bump a blocker into a better matchup, answer an exotic front, or deal with a blitz threat. Here, they play it straight.

So why doesn’t this work? It functionally turns into five one-on-one matchups, and it’s hard to win all five on a given rep. Dallas Turner and Andrew Van Ginkel both bull rush their respective tackles into Malik Willis’ lap, affecting the throw.

Jet protection is a great option against normal rushes because of how players in the slide can cover each other’s bases. With five-on-four, your center can find ways to get a numbers advantage, helping out weaker players or nullifying threatening defenders.

But if you’re against a team that rushes five or more consistently, those slides break down into true 3-on-3 situations, isolating those same mismatches.

So the normal plan didn’t work against the Vikings, who pressured Malik Willis on 12 of those 20 dropbacks, or 60% of the time.

Tampa Bay used a similar plan, to similar results.

In Jet protection, the running back’s job can vary from pure blocking assignments to a quick check for a blitzer and a faster release. 

In the Dolphins play above, neither Cashman nor Smith are in the rush, giving Gordon nothing to do. He releases late as a checkdown, but that kind of late outlet isn’t helpful against a team looking to send extra bodies for quick pressure. He goes to waste.

Tampa Bay preferred to let their running backs check for immediate blitzers, then release. This is tagged in Shanahan systems as “check” routes.

Check routes can be anything you’d see a running back typically run. There’s Check Burst above, Check Wide that turns into a swing pass, check “B” that goes through the B gap then becomes a hitch, and so on. It’s the same route, but with a blitz check tagged onto it.

But if you send those extra rushers 80% of the time, you’ll trap the offense in concepts that require an underneath outlet, but don’t have one. Take this play, where the Bucs sort out an all-up presentation similar to the one the Dolphins ran.

Tristan Wirfs is on an island, while the other four linemen join the slide. Wirfs can be trusted one-on-one, and the rest is a four-on-three, as Van Ginkel is dropping into coverage. Kenneth Gainwell will take one of Eric Wilson or Harrison Smith, depending on who rushes. In this case, Eric Wilson is rushing, so that’s the assignment. 

Should be fine, right?

Stunts can cause all kinds of problems for this system of protection.

Left guard Ben Bredeson and center Cody Mauch double-team Blake Cashman, and Eric Wilson crashes Bredeson to push them even further. Gainwell follows Wilson, and Cashman loops away from that whole crowd.

Tampa has a three-on-two situation with Gainwell, Bredeson and Mauch against Cashman and Wilson, but because Wilson blasts Bredeson over Gainwell’s ankle, he gets a two-for-one, and the rightmost member of the double team, Mauch, can’t follow Cashman as he loops left.

This creates pressure; pressure affects the throw, and crucially, Baker Mayfield has no running back to check it down to. He has to force the ball past the sticks, incomplete, and the Bucs have to punt.

It’s not enough to throw your running back at the problem. Even if you get a clean matchup, the Vikings have three linebackers in the top 30 in pass-rush win rate, per PFF (Cashman 28th, Wilson 24th, and Ivan Pace tied for 3rd).

Skipping ahead a bit, just look at this attempt from Alvin Kamara.

We’ll have to get the tight ends involved here.

Tight end protection utilizes the same half-slide system as Jet rules, with everyone blocking the rusher that covers them until someone is uncovered, who starts the slide.