The Minnesota Vikings boasted one of the league’s best defenses in 2024, ranking third in EPA allowed, per the NFL’s Next Gen Stats. No one forced more takeaways than they did, as they tied for the league lead with 33. Their 49 sacks also tied for fourth in the league, with Jonathan Greenard and Andrew Van Ginkel combining for 23.5.
However, the defense couldn’t rise to the occasion when it mattered most. The Vikings yielded 394 yards to the Detroit Lions in a 31-9 loss in Week 18, a game where they could have clinched home-field advantage.
Brian Flores called blitzes on Jared Goff on 54.3% of his dropbacks, but only sacked him twice. Goff completed 27 of 33 passes for 231 yards and one touchdown. Although he threw two interceptions in the first half, he adjusted in the second and countered Minnesota’s heavy rush with quicker passes. Goff’s average time to throw was 2.7 seconds.
The following week produced similar results when the Vikings faced the Los Angeles Rams in the Wild Card round. Flores once again leaned heavily into his blitzes, sending extra rushers on 69% of Matthew Stafford’s dropbacks. But like the Lions, the Rams countered with quick passes. Stafford’s average time to throw was 2.49 seconds, and he completed 19 of 27 passes for 209 yards and two touchdowns in LA’s 27-9 win.
It’s not that blitzing was out of character for Flores. The Vikings blitzed a league-high 40.6% of the time during the 2024 season and 48.8% of the time in 2023. Still, the blitz rates in the final two games of the season were their highest all year because Minnesota had to send extra rushers.
The need to blitz stemmed from the lack of pass rush generated by Minnesota’s interior defensive linemen in 2024. Jerry Tillery (5.5%), Harrison Phillips (4.7%), and Jonathan Bullard (2.7%) registered abysmal pressure rates despite all logging at least 236 pass-rush snaps.
Flores’ counter to this was using linebacker Jihad Ward as an interior rusher on obvious passing downs. Of Ward’s 441 defensive snaps, 381 came from defensive tackle alignments. These were strategic: He rushed the passer on 371 of those snaps. His role was to rush the passer, and there wasn’t a secret to that.
That philosophy can work well when you’re playing with a lead and know the opposition will throw the ball. But when you’re facing play-callers like Ben Johnson and Sean McVay for the second time in a season — and you’re not playing with a lead — you’re at the mercy of their game plan. They ran the ball, got it out quickly, and forced the Vikings to blitz with guys like Tillery, Phillips, and Bullard on the field.
While it was paramount to build up the offensive line to protect J.J. McCarthy on one side of the ball, it was nearly as important for the Vikings to add interior pass rushers on the defensive side. The Vikings signed Jonathan Allen and Javon Hargrave on the second day of free agency, hoping the longtime veterans could give Flores the flexibility to deploy a standard pass rush that can affect high-end quarterbacks in big games.
Hargrave is 32 and coming off a triceps injury. Still, he’s one of the league’s best interior pass rushers when healthy. His 14.3% pressure rate since 2021 is the highest among interior defenders.
Like Hargrave, Allen is also coming off an injury (pectoral). He’s 30 but has long been one of the best interior linemen in the league. Before his injury in Week 7 last year, he had registered the fourth-most pressures (309) among interior defenders since 2018. Over that same span, his 231 run stops were the third-most among defensive tackles.
That doesn’t mean Flores has to stop getting creative with how he uses personnel. Second-year edge rusher Dallas Turner has reportedly been lined up all over the defensive front during camp — even when Van Ginkel and Greenard are on the field. Guys like Josh Metellus, Blake Cashman, and Ivan Pace Jr. are sure to continue blitzing quarterbacks throughout games.
Adding Hargrave and Allen allows Flores to attack offenses in multiple ways with the same personnel. Hargrave and Allen can impact the run game as effectively as they defend against the aerial attack. That means personnel groupings won’t telegraph intent as often, allowing Flores to pick and choose his aggressiveness. When he did it with leads, the aggression felt well-timed. However, against the Lions and Rams to end the season, the approach felt desperate.
Flores is aggressive by nature. So perhaps his most effective counterpunch to opposing offenses is playing a more traditional style of defense when teams least expect it. Hargrave and Allen were brought in to give him the flexibility to stymie offenses without drawing up the NFL’s next innovative blitz or placing a player in a non-traditional spot to mask deficiencies.
It aligns with the mindset Kwesi Adofo-Mensah brought into the offseason. He walked away from the 2024 season knowing the Vikings needed the capability to win in different ways if they wanted to make a deep playoff run.
“To win four [playoff] games, or however many you need to win the ultimate prize, you can get into different types of fights,” he said after the draft in April. “You don’t know what type of fight it’s going to be when you enter it. You want to have the type of roster, the type of schemes that will allow you to win any type of game.”