The blitz that says everything about Brian Flores's mentality, creativity
EAGAN — Jared Goff will never forget what happened in Miami on November 1, 2020.
Brian Flores happened.
In a 28-17 loss to the Miami Dolphins, Goff was pressured 24 times in 63 drop-backs. He threw two interceptions, was sacked twice, had three balls batted down, four throw-aways and had a total of five turnover-worthy plays. His 37.1 PFF grade was one of the worst of his career.
Out of those 63 drop-backs, Flores blitzed Goff 40 times. He went 18-for-38 for just 177 yards when the rush was coming. A complete nightmare.
Defensive guru Cody Alexander was watching that day in awe. A former Baylor grad assistant and high school coach who runs the Substack Match Quarters and has written a number of books on defensive strategy, Alexander had never seen anything quite like what Flores was doing to Goff that day. Not just the pure volume of blitzes — Buddy Ryan probably did that to a few QBs back in the day too — but one particular concept that continually baffled the Rams and caused Goff to melt in the pocket.
Whenever the Rams lined up in an empty set, the Dolphins lined up six men over the five L.A. offensive linemen. At the snap, all six of them rushed, leaving one defender untouched.
Now this isn’t uncommon. Teams send blitzes at empty sets all the time. Offenses practice how to slide protections to one side and make the quarterback responsible for the other player. The QB normally finds his “hot” read and generally throws into the area vacated by the blitzer. Think of it like when a basketball team double teams someone, the player with the ball tries to get it to the one person who is unguarded.
But when Goff tossed the ball toward his hot read, somehow there were Dolphins players there. On one particular blitz, he threw a perfect pass into the arms of Miami defensive tackle Christian Wilkins.
Here’s the before and after snap looks:
NFL Films
NFL Films
Dropping guys back after showing blitz is still not quite the twist. Dick LeBeau made zone blitzes popular with the Pittsburgh Steelers many years ago. Even Mike Zimmer’s “Double-A Gap” blitz had similar ideas of dropping back players who initially looked like they were going to rush. But what caught Alexander’s eye was that all six guys did rush. Then suddenly, they didn’t.
The Dolphins defenders all took off at the quarterback at the snap of the ball, all of them put hands on the L.A. linemen and then two dropped back into coverage.
Alexander started calling it a “tag” pressure. He started watching more and drew up each version. He quickly figured out that the reason it caused so much havoc is because the offensive line only has one real response to the blitz and Flores used that to his advantage. He explained how it works:
“What you’re telling [the rushers] is that you’re going to just stab the person in front of you, rush at the near hip of the first offensive linemen, get vertical and if the linemen faces the rusher and puts his hands out, then [the rusher] is going to shove him and drop [into coverage],” Alexander said. "That is all the mechanics are.”
Here’s what it looks like on paper (via Match Quarters):
What ends up happening is the rusher gets an easy cue on whether he’s going to blitz or not. Alexander assumed when he started diving into it he was going to find something super complicated with a lot of decisions from the individual players but instead its simplicity for the rushers is the clever part.
“I expected it to have some sort of complexity and then I started drawing it up and I was like, wait, it’s really just whichever side the slide is the guys are dropping?” Alexander said. “What Flores is doing is genius. We are forcing you to make the hot throw. You don’t have a choice, we are dictating that.”
So why does it work so well?
“One of the edge guys is going to come open because they do it against empty and they are going to slide somewhere so you get the edge pressure,” Alexander explained.
The end result is a four-man rush with the best athlete on the D-line at the end running completely free. That’s worst-case scenario. What often happens is even better than that. Many times, especially at home, there will be a miscommunication and someone comes free through the middle. Even if a blitzer’s original intent was to drop back after “tagging” the offensive lineman, if nobody blocks him, then go get the quarterback.
Of course, there are two parts to every pressure concept: The rush and the coverage.
Flores’s schemes are known for asking a lot of his cornerbacks. If you’re loading up the box and sending lots of people at the quarterback in what’s called “cover-0,” which means that everyone who isn’t playing man-to-man on a receiver is chasing the QB, there is no help for the corners and safeties. The “tag” pressure has some element of that but it’s not all bad for the corners.
In this case all of the defensive backs playing off the line of scrimmage at the sticks. If the receivers go vertical, the corners run with them (rather than passing off to a safety). The safeties play everything underneath and attack crossing routes. Everyone is keeping an eye on the quarterback.
What’s interesting about the “tag” concept is that it makes opponents think twice about going empty against Flores. Nobody knows better than Alexander the dangers of good offenses when they can run out empty sets — he was a GA on the Baylor team that gave up 70 points and 656 yards to Geno Smith when West Virginia crushed them out of empty looks. Forcing teams to stay away from basketball on grass on key downs is pretty darn effective. In 2020, the Dolphins ranked No. 1 in the NFL on third down.
“You know if you go empty against [Flores’s defense] then you better get ready for all hell to break loose,” Alexander said. “They don’t care if you’re in the red zone, they don’t care if you’re in the middle of the field, backed up, they’re going to run it. If you’re an offense, you’re saying, ‘we really don’t want to go empty.’ Maybe you go empty early in the game to see if they're really going to do this or try to get the ball out.”
This is exactly what Kevin O’Connell was looking for when he went in search for a defensive coordinator. After last year’s Donatell debacle, O’Connell wanted a DC who could move the needle in key situations.
“It was interesting, as we got into random questions throughout the interview process I kept on hearing things — our football foundation and philosophies are very, very similar,” O’Connell said. “Not every scenario and situation is the same…those critical downs where the ability of a coordinator to apply pressure to the offense in a lot of different ways and that can look a lot of different ways week in and week out.”
Flores likes to say that he’s aggressive, not reckless. There’s a method to the madness. All of that has been on display during training camp to the point where the offense has appeared frustrated at times by Flores attacking them rep after rep.
“The defense has been the curveball of camp for me,” quarterback Kirk Cousins said. “How are we going to handle these pressures, how are we going to handle these fronts, how are we protecting them. I’ve been wearing out my quarterback coach in meetings asking him, ‘how do you want to block that, how do you want to block this?’”
The Vikings’ new DC looks like he’s emptying the tank every practice but the method to his camp madness seems to be looking for how different players fit. We have already seen lots of mixing and matching of personnel, including the use of safety Josh Metellus in a hybrid linebacker role, Marcus Davenport moving around the D-line and UDFA Ivan Pace Jr. getting some first-team reps.
“An aggressive style of defense is what we’re installing but I think identity is a big part of it as well,” Flores said. “Building an identity is a big part of playing defense in this league.”
Alexander is excited to watch more this year, particularly after Flores spent a year under Mike Tomlin in Pittsburgh.
“I think he’s one of the better defensive coordinators in the NFL,” Alexander said. “And you’re getting someone who is looking to prove themselves again.”
