Following the incredible performance by the Minnesota Vikings defense in the team's Christmas Day win over the Detroit Lions on a national stage, a bunch of attention has been placed on the work of Brian Flores this season.
In his third year as the Vikings defensive coordinator, Flores has the team's defense playing at a very high level in 2025, especially as of late, and it's resulted in many speculating about his future in the NFL.
Before Flores joined Minnesota in 2023, he was the head coach of the Miami Dolphins from 2019 to 2021, and on Thursday, former NFL quarterback Brian Hoyer shared on his X account that he believes the current Vikings defensive coordinator is going to be a head coach in the league again in the very near future.
"One of the best coaches I’ve ever been around! He’ll be a head coach again next season."
Will Brian Flores leave the Minnesota Vikings in 2026 to become an NFL head coach again?
With Flores's contract up at the end of the 2025 campaign, some have speculated that he might leave Minnesota in the upcoming offseason to become the defensive coordinator for a different team.
However, given that the Vikings can pay him whatever amount of money he wants (no salary cap for coaches) and his defensive personnel is already set up to his liking, it wouldn't make much sense for him to leave the Twin Cities unless he was offered the opportunity to be a head coach again.
Flores is going to get interviews for head coach openings in 2026; that feels like a given. But after how poorly the end of his tenure with the Dolphins went, he's probably going to be very selective with where he would like his next head-coaching job to be.
Taking over a team with a young signal-caller or uncertainty at the quarterback position doesn't seem like something Flores would want to do based on how poorly things went between him and Tua Tagovailoa in Miami.
So, sorry Tennessee Titans, Cleveland Browns, Las Vegas Raiders, New York Giants, and Arizona Cardinals. If your team is in this group and is in need of a new head coach for next season, Flores probably isn't going to be interested.
But if teams like the Cincinnati Bengals, Baltimore Ravens, Washington Commanders, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, or Kansas City Chiefs end up having an opening for a new head coach in 2026, one can expect Minnesota's defensive coordinator to be interested in any of these potential opportunities.
As an outsider, it also seems easy to ignore the fact that Flores still has an active lawsuit against the NFL and multiple teams in the league. It's very possible that he won't be able to become an NFL head coach again until that lawsuit has been resolved, which would be good news for the Vikings, but not for the dreams of getting another chance to be a head coach that Flores probably has right now.