By Matthew Coller
EAGAN — Minnesota Vikings offensive coordinator Wes Phillips was just learning to drive when his dad Wade Phillips concocted a 1995 Buffalo Bills defense that led the NFL with 49 sacks and allowed a league-low 14 passing touchdowns.
Wade’s 3-4 defense saw defensive ends Bruce Smith and Phil Hansen both produced 10.0 sacks and outside linebacker Bryce Paup pick up 17.5 sacks.
That’s just one of Wade’s many 3-4 success stories. He was in New Orleans in the early 80s with outside linebacker Rickey Jackson had three straight double-digit sack seasons. In Denver in the early 90s OLB Simon Fletcher posted five straight 10+ sack seasons under Phillips’ scheme. Many years later with the Broncos, Von Miller raised a trophy as part of a top-five defense.
The 3-4 defense was popular in places like Pittsburgh and Baltimore when those teams had their terrifying squads as well but over the years defenses had to change and adjust to using nickel personnel more often.
Per SumerSports, the NFL averaged about 60% of the time with five defensive backs on the field in 2025. The Vikings, in contrast, have only used nickel personnel 37% of the time this season and hovered around 35% last year.
The reason for the uptick in nickel defenses is that opponents have leaned into using three wide receivers. Even with an uptick in bigger personnel over the last couple seasons on offense, many defenses have chosen to keep an extra defensive back on the field or use a “big nickel.”
But Flores has played his four linebackers with Turner, Eric Wilson, Blake Cashman and Andrew Van Ginkel all on the field for at least 59 of the 70 defensive snaps during Sunday’s victory over the Bears in which the defense allowed just three points.
It’s ironic that Wade’s son is now on the other side of the ball watching defensive coordinator Brian Flores do many of the same things that his father did with the dynamic and dangerous 3-4 scheme to baffle opponents and create unblocked (or lightly blocked) rushes for an outside linebacker with crazy quickness in Dallas Turner.
On Tuesday, Wes Phillips explained why having this particular alignment causes so many problems for the offense.
“You never know who’s coming [after the quarterback], especially with Flo,” Phillips explained. “There’s a little more of interchangeable pieces when you’ve got outside backers who can rush or can drop. You can bring the inside guys. You can create a four-man rush with four different combinations. You can create a five-man rush with several different combinations.”
We can see the interchangeable pieces part on paper. Against the Bears, 15 different players rushed the passer on at least one snap. That’s right. Fifteen. Only three players who saw time during the game did not rush the passer and all three were cornerbacks. Everybody else chased Caleb Williams around Soldier Field.
“The 3-4, I’m biased a little bit but i’ve always i’ve always thought it was it was the more difficult scheme to go against,” Phillips said.
The 3-4 defense isn’t just known for its crazed pass rush combinations. Over Wade’s long career, he had 21 different defenses that ranked in the top 12 in rushing yards against and his ‘96 Bills team was No. 1 in yards per carry allowed. Flores’ defenses have ranked fourth, fourth and eighth from 2023-2025 and this year they are 12th (but only because Williams scrambled effectively on Sunday).
“Stand-up guys can be more challenging to pin in or to crack [block],” Phillips explained. “They’ve got vision. Vision on the quarterback, vision outside of what’s going on. A guy like Van Ginkel is so aware….that’s not a knock on 4-3 defenses. It’s just a different scheme, and they’re asking guys to do different responsibilities.”
The 3-4 defense isn’t just a scheme, it’s a mindset. It’s like it was made for evil geniuses because there are so many options and nobody who runs the 3-4 is doing it because they want to play things safe and be conservative on defense. The Bill Belichicks and Dick Lebeaus of NFL history do it because they can use the full breadth of their imagination and maximize every once of their players’ skillsets.
The 3-4 mind is built to attack. They don’t want quarterbacks going through reads comfortably in this defense. They want QBs to be in a house of mirrors for three hours.
That can be demonstrated in how often the Vikings have sent extra rushers. Per Pro-Football Reference, the Vikings have used a five-man rush on 82% of their defensive snaps. The next highest is the Bears at 46%.
“Our fastball is that we’re going to try to be aggressive and be physical,” Flores said.
As much as you see some of Flores’ ideas around the NFL on Sundays, nobody has emulated his degree of aggression in the league any time recently. That might be because it takes an incredible interconnectedness and trust between Flores and his players and between the defenders themselves to bring it all together.
“Everyone working together, everyone communicating, knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the guys around you, a lot of what we try to do is how can I help the next guy? What can I do to help a corner or safety?” Flores explained. “If I’m a safety, how do I help the corner? If I’m a corner, how do I help the safety? If I’m a linebacker, how do I help the D-line? If I’m a D-lineman, how do I help the edge guys? You put all those things together and you have 11 unselfish guys.”
But how are the Vikings sending extra players at the quarterback without making major sacrifices from a coverage perspective?
Well, sometimes they do if things go wrong. We saw that when the Packers hit an 81-yard touchdown in Week 1.
The Vikings bounced back from the big Packers plays and ended up winning the game by creating turnovers.
They are not afraid of allowing an explosive play because they can make up for it with an game-changing play of their own. Fear is simply not something Flores understands.
“I know there’s a lot out there about blitz percentages. I tell our guys all the time, you know, if we’re going to go down, we’re going to go down a certain way, we’re going to go down blitzing people. That’s just my feeling on it.”
ADDITIONAL NOTES
— The Vikings added another running back to the mix in Jaret Patterson. The 5-foot-9 runner has been in the NFL since 2021. He has 126 carries for 503 yards in his career and rushed 41 times at 3.9 YPA last year with the Chargers.
— It appears P Brett Thorson’s injury is bad enough to warrant another punter getting into the mix. The Vikings signed Johnny Hekker back to the team on Tuesday. Thorson is dealing with a hamstring injury. He beat out Hekker during a training camp/preseason punting battle.
For years we watched BFlo blitz because that was the only way he had to get pressure. Now the squad is good enough to get pressure with four or get insane pressure with 5+. Great stuff. SKOL
Will be interesting to see how it goes against the Bucs this week. Looks like they’ve been much better running the ball than throwing so far, so would guess they try to test the run defense. Vikes actually have a higher rush EPA than pass, but really feels like the bears would’ve won that game if they’d just kept running the ball. Also gotta imagine the blitz percentage normalizes just a little bit, but we’ll see, lol.