One week after stifling one of the best play-callers in the NFL, Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores is tasked with doing the same to one of the league's best up-and-coming play-callers Sunday against the Houston Texans.
Flores seems to have the key to beating Kyle Shanahan considering the Vikings are the only NFC team to beat the 49ers in a meaningful game since last season, and they've done so twice. Now he faces Texans offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik, from the Shanahan coaching tree himself, in a matchup of two 2-0 teams on CBS.
The Vikings have one of the best defenses in the league early in the season, and any sustained success would typically lead to the defensive coordinator getting head-coaching interviews. But before that potentially happens, the former Miami Dolphins head coach faces questions about his relationship with his old quarterback while also still serving as a plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against the NFL.
I talked with 10 sources across the league and various teams and levels about Flores. What makes him such a good coordinator, whether he should get another opportunity to be a head coach and, more importantly, whether he actually will get another shot.
Vikings stats
Through the first two weeks of the season, the Vikings lead the NFL in sacks (11) and quarterback hits (19) while being tied for the league lead in pressures with 36.
When talking about top-of-league numbers and Flores, you'd expect a high blitz rate. But these Vikings are blitzing on just a third of dropbacks so far, well down from the 50.7% rate that led the league in 2023.
With a blanket caveat that we are barely a tenth of the way through the season, the Vikings are third in points allowed after facing the Giants and the 49ers. Still, with a blitz rate cut by nearly 20 percentage points, the Vikings are getting better pressure than last year (38.7% this year compared to 32.1% last year.)
49ers quarterback Brock Purdy, the third runner-up to last year's NFL MVP, told Flores on the field after San Francisco's 23-17 loss last week: "Your scheme is crazy." More on that later.
'The Tua stuff'
Coming off a Super Bowl victory as the Patriots' de facto defensive coordinator, Flores went to the Dolphins as their next head coach ahead of the 2019 season. He went 24-25 in his three seasons there, including two winning seasons highlighted by a 10-6 mark in 2020.
But the Dolphins failed to make the playoffs while he was at the helm. Dolphins owner Stephen Ross fired Flores after three years in part due to the crumbling of the relationship between Flores and franchise quarterback Tua Tagovailoa.
In a podcast over the summer, Tagovailoa referred to Flores as a "terrible person" and recounted his relationship with his former coach.
"To put it in the simplest terms, if you woke up every morning and I told you that you suck at what you did, that you don't belong doing what you do, that you shouldn't be here, that this guy should be here, that you haven't earned this," Tagovailoa said. "And then you have somebody else come in and tell you, 'Dude, you are the best fit for this. You're accurate. You're the best whatever, you're this, you're that.' How would it make you feel listening to one or the other?"
Flores responded to Tagovailoa in his own press conference shorlty after the podcast aired. He said he was happy for the quarterback and wished him well.
"Look, I'm human," Flores said. "So, that hit me in a way that I wouldn't say was positive for me. But at the same time, I've got to use that and say, 'Hey, how can I grow from that, or how can I be better?' And that's really where I'm at from that standpoint.
"Do I feel like that's me? No. But how can I grow from that situation and create a world where that's not the case where anyone says that about Brian Flores?"
Ryan Fitzpatrick, who played for Flores for two of his three seasons in Miami, said on Prime Video that Tagovailoa's experience was not his experience.
"Look, there is a certain style that Flo coached with. For me, he coached me differently than he coached Tua. The intention of what Flo did was to try to get the best out of Tua," Fitzpatrick said earlier this month. "When you put the coaching style that he had with Brian Flores and you put it next to what Mike McDaniel came and did, which is love him up and tell me how great he was, then it probably made it seem like it was even worse than maybe it was at that time."
One high-ranking NFC executive told me: "He's a good coach. Whether he's learned from Miami power struggle/behavior would be key. The Tua stuff will be tough for him."
Asked if Flores could overcome Tagovailoa's comments, another high-ranking executive with a different team said: "In time. His humble initial response to it was good."
An NFL evaluator who has known Flores for several years said he was sure Flores coached Tagovailoa hard, but found the "terrible person" comment to be "way out of bounds."
"After meeting with a lot of coaches and front-office personnel and self-reflecting, he has a much better understanding of how players and people in general are wired now," the source said. "He has a better pulse on how to handle players from a mental standpoint. He will treat them all fairly, but he understands he can't coach everyone the same way. He won't make that mistake again."
The lawsuit
In February 2022 Flores filed a class action lawsuit against the NFL claiming racial discrimination. His allegations included specific claims against the Giants, Broncos and Texans, and later he was joined by two more former NFL coaches. Today, most of the lawsuit is in NFL arbitration.
Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin hired Flores a few months after the suit was filed as a senior defensive assistant/linebackers coach for the Steelers.
The source familiar with Flores said that year helped give the coach even more perspective.
"Spending a year with Mike Tomlin in Pittsburgh allowed him the opportunity to view everything firsthand from a very successful head coach who is a lot like him from a personality and background standpoint," the source said. "Seeing how Mike managed people while also keeping standards and expectations high was big for him. Brian won't worry about small things that don't affect wins and losses this time around."
After a season in Pittsburgh, the Vikings hired Flores as their defensive coordinator in 2023. The Vikings had the 13th-ranked scoring defense and 16th-ranked total defense after faltering in the final four games of last season. Flores did not get a head-coaching interview opportunity following the 2023 season.
Flores participated in the NFL's Accelerator Program at the league meetings in May. It was the second league meeting Flores had attended as the Vikings defensive coordinator, stopping next door in 2022 when the same meetings were held in Minnesota.
"He was exceptional," said a source in the room. "A leader in the room with other coaches, expressed level of vulnerability/leadership during sessions and strong engagement with [team] owners" during the meetings.
Rod Graves, executive director of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, sat in on those meetings and helped conduct mock interviews sessions with all the participants, including Flores. Graves said Flores "presented himself as an outstanding professional in our interviews."
"We talked about building a championship-caliber team. He was outstanding in every phase of discussion. He was poised, displayed exceptional knowledge of head coach management, handling players and dealing with the game," Graves says.
"He spoke briefly -- and I don't want to violate any trust here -- about lessons learned and how he would use those previous experiences to be more of an effective leader, even his growth as a person. He really, clearly, was one of the best interviews we conducted."
Whether an NFL owner would actually hire someone to be a face of their franchise while they're actively suing the league is a question you, the reader, likely have an opinion on. But in the time since the filing of the suit, two different franchises have hired him, and the league hasn't treated him like a leper at meetings.
Why he's so successful
The stats are the stats, but what about Flores' scheme is so "crazy," as Purdy put it, that makes it so hard?
"[Shanahan's] superpower is having the answer for everything. He can predict what the defense will do and manipulate the rules of the defense," said one evaluator who watched the 49ers-Vikings game. "Not that Flores' scheme is unsound, but it's not logical in a football sense. Offensive formations, shifts, motions don't work. They don't react like a normal defense would or how we'd expect."
Say the nickel is creeping toward the line of scrimmage. A quarterback may typically read that as believing there could be a void in the flat. But at the snap, Flores may send the deep-half safety screaming down into the flat where the void in coverage was supposed to be, confusing the quarterback and the rest of the eligible receivers.
"It's really just the unpredictability of it. They just do so much to disguise and window dress what they're really trying to do and they have the personnel to be multiple and versatile," said a second NFL evaluator. "Hard to tell who, if anyone, is bringing pressure and who is dropping. What's the coverage over the top? Is it really man or are they just playing zone with man principles.
"It gets the offense to second-guess things and makes them think they have to take certain options off the table in terms of calling and checking plays. He's done some of this stuff since New England, but it's definitely evolved over the past five years or so."
A third evaluator made the point that such unpredictability can lead to early season success, but questioned whether it can hold up late in the year.
The Vikings were fifth in points allowed and 10th in yards allowed through the first 14 weeks of last season. From Week 15 until the end of the year, when Minnesota went 0-4 amid several injuries, the Vikings were 30th in points and 31st in yards.
"Something tells me the unpredictability could wear off and people figure out how to scheme him up," a fourth evaluator told me. "But he'd be so tough in a non-common opponent scenario. I have to imagine he's hell to prepare for on a 'Thursday Night Football' week."
Where the NFL is trending
The last NFL coaching cycle potentially provided a glimpse into the coming cycle this year. Of the seven head coaches hired last cycle, four are defensive-minded coaches. And three of the seven previously held head-coaching jobs in the NFL.
"Given success of DeMeco [Ryans] and potentially [Mike] Macdonald, defensive guys may be en vogue," said a high-ranking team executive.
The Shanahan-McVay system, or more broadly coaches from the Mike Shanahan tree, have taken over the NFL in recent years. Along with Shanahan and Sean McVay there are the likes of Mike McDaniel, Matt LaFleur, Arthur Smith and Zac Taylor who are primary play-callers for their teams.
And in the pipeline of candidates to be an NFL head coach include Houston OC Bobby Slowik, New Orleans OC Klint Kubiak and Atlanta OC Zac Robinson, to name a few.
Going back to 2020 as either the Dolphins head coach or Vikings defensive coordinator, Flores has gone 6-1 against head coaches who come from that tree.
Multiple sources indicated their hesitation with hiring Flores in the future would be the quarterback position. How well he mixes with a young quarterback could come into question during the interview process.
"If he interviews for head-coaching jobs in the future, he will need to have his QB coaching and development plan ironed out in detail," said the source close to Flores. "He will need to convey how he is better suited to handle quarterbacks and offensive football in general. A team with a stable QB situation would be smart to include their QB in the interview process."
Others said recommendations from fellow coaches and, perhaps most importantly, his players would go a long way in helping him land another job. "In my opinion," a second high-ranking team executive said, "owners that want to win like hot candidates with advocates."
There's still nearly nine-tenths of the season remaining, and the Vikings defense has plenty more to prove. But plenty around the league see a path to Flores returning as a head coach if all goes well.
