Brian Flores’s defense is a big reason why the Minnesota Vikings own a 6-0 record. While many obsess over his blitz rate and the inside-out attack it presents to opponents, another signature of his scheme is forcing mistakes, with the NFL’s second-highest turnover rate at 15.9 percent.
For a team that thrives when it wins the turnover battle, that number is big. But when the Vikings take on the Detroit Lions on Sunday, they’ll face a quarterback who rarely makes mistakes.
Jared Goff has been outstanding for the Lions this year, completing 67.3 percent of his passes for 1,788 yards and 14 touchdowns. More impressively, he has yet to commit a single turnover and hasn’t thrown an interception on his 223 pass attempts, making him the first quarterback in NFL history to start a season with 14 touchdowns and no interceptions.
On Sunday, something will have to give, and Flores might have the tricks up his sleeve to make it happen.
Brian Flores has a plan to make Jared Goff uncomfortable vs. the Minnesota Vikings
The Vikings have become one of the NFL’s best at creating turnovers, but it’s not as simple as having a shutdown cornerback or big stars everywhere. Flores uses a ton of smoke and mirrors to force quarterbacks to go haywire when dropping back to pass and several of those tactics will be on display against Goff and the Lions.
The first comes from Flores’s use of pre-snap illusions. Many times, Flores’s defense walks six or seven defenders to the line of scrimmage. While it appears the Vikings are about to blitz (and normally do), it’s hard to identify which players are coming, creating simulated pressure that speeds up quarterbacks' internal clock, especially in the rare instances Minnesota sends only four pass-rushers.
To make matters worse, ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky noted that while the Vikings come out in identifiable schemes on the back end, they switch to a different scheme once the ball is snapped. The Vikings also use hybrid coverages on the back end that let players identify lanes to the ball, making coverage notoriously hard to read if a quarterback identifies what’s happening up front and eliminates the quick, easy throws that help passers counter the blitz.
“When you’re watching tape, from a play design perspective, you don’t necessarily know how [the pass concepts are designed],” Orlovsky said. “You don’t know what coverage to attack because you don’t know what the coverage is, let alone being the quarterback trying to see it.”
That also leads to the elite communication the Vikings have on defense. Minnesota pushed for Harrison Smith’s return because he can disguise coverages, identify weaknesses in the opposing offense, and put his teammates in position to succeed. Blake Cashman has a similar role and believes that the preparation during the weeks helps them create takeaways on Sundays.
“In this defense, we love chaos,” Cashman told Vikings staff writer and editor Rob Kleifield after collecting 12 tackles, two sacks and four pass defenses in the win over the Indianapolis Colts. “It really all starts early in the week with our preparation. They’re just focused, ready to go. So even before I give a call, [they] are anticipating what it’s going to be, so it makes my job easy. I love playing with them because who doesn’t want to play with a bunch of great football players that make your life easier?”
Vikings defense faces its toughest turnover test yet against the Lions
With the Vikings also doing a solid job eliminating the run early in games, teams can’t work around Flores’s scheme unless they have a consistent ground game. The Colts did that by averaging 4.7 yards per carry in the Vikings' win last Sunday. But Daniel Jones still struggled, totaling 64 passing yards and throwing a game-sealing interception to Smith on the final drive.
The Lions' running game, anchored by Jahmyr Gibbs, will challenge the Vikings on Sunday. But so is Goff, who leads the NFL with 298.0 passing yards per game and a 112.5 passer rating over his first six games.
Goff was also stingy with the Lions last season, throwing just eight interceptions in 578 passing attempts. But in his last meeting with Flores’s defense, he threw two interceptions and fumbled three times in a loss to the Vikings on Christmas Day.
Through six games, the Vikings have proven that they can make any quarterback start throwing meatball subs. But forcing Goff into mistakes is an even tougher task, and Flores’s defense is fully equipped for it as the two teams meet on Sunday.
Add us as a preferred source on Google