EAGAN — Brian Flores has already made his presence felt immediately on the practice fields at TCO Performance Center.
During the practice open to the media on Tuesday, linebackers, cornerbacks and safeties were lining up all over the place. They were creeping up at the line of scrimmage, never making it clear who was dropping back and who was rushing. Players on the offensive side were pretty surprised to see what was going on across from them.
“It’s crazy, it’s only Day 2 of OTAs and Flo[res] is bringing looks that you’d be getting on Day 15 but it’s only going to help us get better and I’m excited to see them boys fly around when they have a different opponent, it’s going to be fun,” left tackle Christian Darrisaw said.
Flores makes no bones about it: He’s here to take names and send blitzes. On paper you can see his aggressive nature. As Dolphins head coach in 2021, his defense ranked second in blitz percentage per Pro-Football Reference. His safeties’ usage data on PFF looked more like some of those players had no position at all. You would think that the defensive players would be asked to mold to their go-get-’em coordinator’s scheme but Flores isn’t exactly looking at it that way. He wants the players’ skills to meld with his style to create their own unique defense, not just manufacture it by throwing heat.
“We are installing an aggressive style of defense but I think identity is a big part of it as well, building an identity is a big part of playing defense in this league,” Flores said.
“All of this is exciting to me, getting to know the guys, spending time with them and finding out the things that they do well and what buttons to push and what buttons not to push,” Flores added.
The former Patriots position coach and Dolphins head coach has a similar philosophy as head coach Kevin O’Connell when it comes to making all of the pieces fit together: Use players to their strengths.
“We’re all trying to find out what guys do best and put them in positions to do what they do well,” Flores said. “It’s hard to do that because so much of the game is physical so you’re forecasting based on what you’ve seen [without pads]… a lot of the final decisions of what we’re going to be are going to be made down the road.”
The interesting part of this particular group is that Flores inherited players whose strengths and weaknesses may not be entirely defined yet. Projecting the starting lineup, about half the players will have one season or less worth of defensive snaps. Two corners and one safety were drafted last year and battled injuries. One starting inside linebacker sat behind Eric Kendricks. All the depth pass rushers are still developing. It’s almost a blank slate for Flores.
“Everyone is going to play some piece of coverage, some piece of pass rush [in OTAs] and give us a chance to see what guys’ natural IQ for those things are and get us to work with other positions,” inside linebackers coach Mike Siravo said. “Brian is a fundamental and technique based guy with a great scheme but we’re going to be great at the techniques and move the pieces around.”
The blankness of that slate is different for Flores than other defensive minds because he isn’t trying to make any square pegs fit into round holes. He shapes the pegs and the holes. His defense is known for using players in versatile roles and you don’t have to look far to see that the Vikings drafted three players on defense who they projected as being able to play several different positions.
“I’ve been in some situations where the answer to everything is scheme and what I love about our staff is that the answer is toughness first and then fundamentals, technique, effort and then the scheme,” Siravo said.
The next OTA phase and mandatory minicamp will be about the players learning Flores’ techniques and Flores learning the players’ skills. He knows that whether it all comes together and whether the Vikings’ defense improves depends on those two things intersecting.
“Every time you step on the practice field, what is our identity and what are people going to say about us…what do we want it to look like?”
