Do the numbers behind Brian Flores's aggressive mindset add up?

Haley English takes an analytical look at Flores's blitzes that reveals the exact boom or bust nature of sending pressure (and how personnel matters)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Please welcome to Purple Insider Haley English A.K.A. Intern Haley. She is currently a student at Villanova with a background in data and analytics. Haley has interned at Pro Football Focus and currently contributes to The 33rd Team. She also great up a Jets fan so she understands your pain, Vikings fans.

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By Haley English

Defensive coordinators and gymnasts have more in common than you might think. Both jobs require a lot of flexibility and each is playing a constant game of risk vs. reward. You don't become Simone Biles without hitting a triple twisting double back move but there's also a chance that trying such a technique could result in falling flat on your face. That's pretty much how blitzing in the NFL works and new Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores is the type to go for gold rather than settling to keep his feet on the ground.

We can see from the league-wide statistics (via PFF) the significance of the risk-reward proposition.

In 2022, the NFL as a whole ran blitzes on 25.8% of defensive snaps and succeeded at holding the offense to negative EPA on 55.3% of those plays. The quarterback pressure rate was 40.7% with blitzes (and 30.4% without them) and the sack rate was 8.3% with blitzes (and 6.1% without them). Despite succeeding on more than half of the blitzes and upping the pressure rates, however, blitzes overall resulted in an average of minus-0.37 EPA per game, since blitzes opened the door for explosive plays on offense. Basically, if a defensive coordinator blitzed on every play, we could expect it to hurt the defense overall but the rewards are high when they are executed well.

How much risk can Flores take without hitting the mat? In his introductory press conference, Flores showed an understanding of the balance of blitzing. saying: “By nature I like to play an aggressive style…not reckless.”

Let’s take a look at Flores’s general blitz scheme and rates in his past four years of coaching.

With the Dolphins, Flores increased their blitz rate each season he was the head coach, reaching a near league high 38.6% of defensive snaps that had an extra rusher in 2021. It’s hard to say exactly how much he influenced Pittsburgh’s rush packages but they did see an increase of 5%, reaching a 29% blitz rate in 2022.

Flores’ first year in Miami was a little rough, accumulating a wildly negative defensive EPA on blitzes. We don’t have to look very hard at their roster to see why his aggressiveness was not effective that year. But his success increased dramatically as he settled in over the next couple of seasons, and he played at least some role in the Steelers posting the third best 28.04 defensive EPA on blitz plays in 2022. His blitz success rate (% of blitzes that result in negative EPA for the offense) increased over the years as well, ultimately being successful on over 58% of blitzes in 2021 and 2022, which both ranked in the top 10.

In terms of personnel packages, Flores has run blitzes out of many formations, but his most common were out of the nickel and dime packages. Flores was a big fan of rushing safeties during blitzes while he was in Miami, and it came with outstanding success. Dolphins’ safety Brandon Jones was a pass rusher in 46.8% of blitz snaps he was on the field for, and safety Jevon Holland rushed in 26.9% of blitz snaps. In fact, when either of these two safeties were a part of the blitz, the team’s blitz success rate was higher than most of the linebackers. Holland’s team blitz success rate was 71.4% and Jones’ was 59.4%. Flores also called his highest percentage of blitzes on third downs.

This approach is vastly different from how the Vikings’ safeties were used last year. Between Harrison Smith, Cam Bynum and Josh Metellus, they totaled 19 pass rush snaps.

Flores’ scheme with the Dolphins wasn’t perfect. They allowed a good chunk of explosive plays while blitzing, but it did have some bright spots. Here are the Dolphins’ defensive stats from 2019-2021 broken down by whether or not Flores called a blitz on the play. 

Blitzing brought down the opponent’s completion percentage about 4%, but it resulted in an increase in both the opponent’s yards gained per pass attempt and explosive play rate. Flores’ blitzes resulted in about 2% more sacks and over 11% more pressures than plays where there wasn’t an extra pass rusher. So, it does pay off if you can get pressure on the quarterback.

The Vikings haven’t been the most blitz heavy team over the past four years, and they could definitely benefit from an aggressive play-caller like Flores coming in but they clearly need more strength in the secondary if Flores wants to bring extra pass rushers more often. Here’s what the Vikings’ blitz rates have looked like the past couple seasons.

The Vikings’ most impressive stat (and basically the only one well above the league average) was their defensive EPA on blitzes in 2019, where the they accumulated 14.27 EPA. However, that was four seasons and many cornerbacks ago, and the Vikings haven’t been extremely efficient on their relatively low percentage of blitz plays ever since.

Expect Flores to immediately raise the Vikings blitz rate, and also make this defense more successful at converting those blitzes into tough plays for the opposing offense. Of course, that comes with a caveat: If the Vikings roll out cornerbacks who gave up a 134.3 QB rating into man coverage (per PFF) as Cam Dantzler did last year, they could be in trouble.

Not all Vikings CBs struggled in man coverage though. Fan favorite Duke Shelley gave up just six catches on 15 attempts. Nickel corner Chandon Sullivan had mixed results with a 94.4 rating against in man but that was wildly better than when playing zone (108.3). Patrick Peterson was asked to play man-to-man so rarely that he only saw 10 passes his way when playing man.

In 2022 under Ed Donatell, the Vikings ran their blitzes out of the nickel formation 70% of the time, and otherwise ran them out of base 3-4. With Flores’ successes on blitzes out of nickel and dime, he’ll probably utilize those formations more often than not. In terms of players, Flores will look to Harrison Smith as that safety he can utilize like Jevon Holland and Brandon Jones. Smith rushed on 20.1% of blitz snaps from 2020-2022, the highest of any non-linebacker on the Vikings. He was very efficient at blitzing too, with a 59.1% team defensive success rate, which is only behind Eric Kendricks (who succeeded on 62.5% of blitz snaps).

While Flores was with the Dolphins and Steelers, almost all of each team’s linebackers had blitz success rates between 50% and 60%, very respectable numbers. When we look at the Vikings, almost all of their linebackers had success rates below 55% (with the exception of Kendricks), so Flores will be a great coaching addition for this position group, since it is an area of his expertise. 

Overall, Flores brings a ton of defensive aggression and success to the Minnesota Vikings. Expect him to start an overhaul of this defense over the next year, specifically in the area of blitzes, in hopes to raise their defensive EPA and success rates on those plays. Flores made it clear he doesn’t want to play it safe as a defense – and even though he may not yet have the tools in terms of personnel to take the Simone Biles-level risks, given time those risks will probably outweigh the rewards…if they get the cornerbacks who can hold it all together.

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