Brian Flores has fixed one major flaw with the Vikings’ defense and it could help Minnesota sustain success this season
The Vikings have fixed an aspect of their defense that has haunted them under Kevin O’Connell.
The Minnesota Vikings have finally seen sustained success under head coach Kevin O’Connell. Five games into year four, they are 37-19 under O’Connell’s tutelage.
They haven’t been perfect over the first three years, as O’Connell and general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah spent the entire time trying to rebuild the roster while working on winning football games. The majority of reporters and analysts maligned the competitive rebuild, but they proved you can do both at the same time.
We know that the main struggles of this team are. They have yet to figure out how to run the ball consistently, the offensive line can’t keep it together for multiple reasons, and the defense allows way too many points at the end of halves.
Vikings two-minute defense has shown significant improvements
The first three years of the O’Connell era showed a major weakness in their defense: they couldn’t stop teams in the two-minute drill.
One of the biggest reasons that they haven’t been able to do that is due to the nature of how defensive coordinator Brian Flores calls his defenses. He doesn’t go into prevent defense, but the coverage and pressure structures are much more simplistic.
This season only has five games played so far, but they have been eons better at preventing their opponents from scoring in the final two minutes.
| Season | Points Allowed | 2MD Drives | Points/Drive | Plays | Points/Play |
| 2022 | 65 | 26 | 2.50 | 140 | 0.46 |
| 2023 | 65 | 24 | 2.71 | 151 | 0.43 |
| 2024 | 76 | 20 | 3.70 | 138 | 0.55 |
| 2025 | 9 | 7 | 1.29 | 38 | 0.24 |
You can tell that the Vikings are significantly better at maximizing their defensive opportunities in late-game situations. The underlying metrics continue to emphasize a much better-performing unit, including not allowing a single point allowed in the final two minutes of the game.
| Season | Plays | EPA/play | Success Rate | 3 & Out % |
| 2022 | 140 | 0.05 | 52.4% | 30.8% |
| 2023 | 151 | 0.12 | 44.9% | 54.2% |
| 2024 | 138 | 0.15 | 43.6% | 50.0% |
| 2025 | 38 | -0.37 | 30.2% | 85.7% |
It needs to be said that this is a much different unit than in previous years. The Vikings overall are second in EPA/play at -0.12 and first in EPA/dropback at -0.23. The biggest factor of that success has been the improvement in the pass rush, especially on the interior.
Now, the Vikings haven’t been dominant with the pass rush, but they are getting to the quarterback more than you might think.
- 2024: 49 sacks, 320 pressures
- 2025: 13 sacks (44 projected over 17 games), 97 pressures (329 projected)
Continuing to have a lethal pass rush has been an important aspect of the game, but the focus has been less on the edge rusher and more focused on the interior. Jonathan Allen, Javon Hargrave, Jalen Redmond, and Levi Drake Rodriguez have had the biggest impact in the success of the defense. Flores can just call normal pressure looks.
The presence of an interior pass rusher didn’t exist last season for the Vikings. They had to manufacture a pass rush with different looks, blitzes, and long looping stunts. That isn’t the case anymore. Sure, Flores still uses all of those elements in his defense, but he doesn’t have to use them to generate pressure on a down-to-down basis. This is the main factor why the defense has grown year/year. Getting pressure quickly on the interior is the hardest, but best path to impacting the quarterback.
The big question with the Vikings is how well they will sustain this kind of success. Anytime you have a small sample size, the results can get wonky, but it’s a fantastic start in improving an area of the Vikings that has been rough for some time.
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