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Minnesota Vikings coaching staff — Defence
Defensive coordinator of the Minnesota Vikings. Hired on 6 February 2023 and still in the job as of 12 September 2026, after the club announced a contract extension on 21 January 2026.
Full name
Brian Francisco Flores
Born
24 Feb 1981Brooklyn, New York. He is 45 and is living.
Role
Defensive coordinatorCalls the Vikings defence. Fourth season in the job.
Before Minnesota
Dolphins head coach2019–2021, then one season with Pittsburgh in 2022.
01
Overview
Flores spent fifteen seasons on the New England Patriots staff, three as head coach of the Miami Dolphins, one with the Pittsburgh Steelers, and has run the Minnesota defence since 2023.
Brian Francisco Flores was born on 24 February 1981 in Brooklyn, New York. He played linebacker at Boston College, where the Vikings list him as graduating with a bachelor's degree in English and a master's degree in administrative studies. He joined the Patriots in 2004 as a scouting assistant and worked his way through scouting and every level of the coaching staff before becoming a head coach.
The Vikings hired him as defensive coordinator on 6 February 2023. On 21 January 2026 the club announced that he had signed a contract extension, and he remains the defensive coordinator as of 12 September 2026, the date on which every claim on this page was checked.
A separate strand of his public record sits outside the coaching. In February 2022 he filed an employment-discrimination lawsuit against the NFL and several of its clubs. That case is still live in federal court and is set out, with its procedural history, in section 07 below.
02
Reference
This page carries no career totals that could not be traced to the sources listed in section 08. Where a number belongs to a single charting outlet rather than to the official record, the outlet is named beside it.
03
Career path
Flores is one of comparatively few NFL coordinators who began on the scouting side. The roles below are as the Vikings and Wikipedia record them; the years are the seasons in which he held each title.
04
Head coaching
Flores was named Miami's head coach in 2019, immediately after calling the New England defence in Super Bowl LIII. He coached three seasons there. The club's own announcement of his dismissal put his record at 24–25.
Brian Flores, regular-season record as head coach of the Miami Dolphins. He did not reach the playoffs in any of the three seasons. On a narrow screen the table scrolls sideways.
| Season | Team | W–L | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Miami Dolphins | 5–11 | His first season as a head coach, during a roster teardown. |
| 2020 | Miami Dolphins | 10–6 | A winning season; Miami missed the playoffs. |
| 2021 | Miami Dolphins | 9–8 | A second straight winning season in the first 17-game year. He was relieved of his duties afterwards. |
| Total | 3 seasons | 24–25 | 0 playoff appearances |
Season records are as given by Wikipedia's Brian Flores article and the corresponding Miami Dolphins season articles; the 24–25 aggregate is as stated in the Dolphins' own press release announcing the change. Pro Football Reference, which this site normally uses as its first check for coaching records, blocked automated access at the time of writing, so these figures were confirmed against those sources instead.
05
Minnesota
The figures below are the ones the Vikings published themselves on 21 January 2026, covering the three full seasons Flores had then completed in Minnesota — 2023, 2024 and 2025. They are club-published figures, not independent charting, and are quoted here as such.
2024. The Vikings led the NFL with 24 interceptions and went 14–3 in the regular season. ESPN reported the defence ranked third in the league in expected points added per play that year. The NFL's Next Gen Stats, quoted by the club in February 2025, recorded 49 sacks, 33 takeaways and 254 pressures, the third-most.
2025. The club records 282.6 total yards allowed per game, third-best in the NFL, and 158.5 passing yards allowed per game, second-fewest behind Buffalo. ESPN put the defence eighth in expected points added per play.
Figures for the 2026 season are deliberately absent. It is week two of the 2026 campaign as this page is written and no meaningful season-long ranking exists yet.
06
Scheme
The terms below are the ones used in published film analysis of this defence, chiefly by Cody Alexander of MatchQuarters and in the Vikings' own Next Gen Stats write-up. They are described in words rather than drawn as diagrams, because no charted play data is available to this site and a diagram would imply precision it does not have.
Next Gen Stats, as quoted by the Vikings in February 2025, put Minnesota's blitz rate at 48.8 per cent in 2023 and 40.6 per cent in 2024, the latter the highest in the NFL that season. The rate came down while the results went up: average time to pressure improved from 2.69 seconds to 2.53 seconds, the second-fastest in the league.
A simulated pressure shows more rushers than it sends: defenders walk up to the line, then one or more drop out at the snap and a different man rushes. MatchQuarters reported in November 2025 that the Vikings led the league in these looks, which is how a defence can threaten a blitz on a down it intends to play with coverage.
MatchQuarters names two of the interior patterns Minnesota uses by their coaching labels, Cross-Dog and 3-Thru, both of which attack the middle of the protection rather than the edge. The aim is to collapse the pocket in front of the quarterback so that stepping up is not an escape.
The aggression is not paired with man coverage as often as the blitz totals suggest. MatchQuarters charted the Vikings playing zone on 76.4 per cent of snaps in 2025, and on 52.8 per cent of their own pressures — sending extra rushers while still keeping a zone structure behind them.
The same analysis describes two underneath defenders playing with their eyes on the quarterback beneath a Cover 3 shell, and non-traditional Tampa 2 looks used on later downs. The point of each is that the picture before the snap should not tell the quarterback what happens after it.
MatchQuarters traces the all-out pressure package to a modified Cover 0 variant Flores ran in Miami, and the underneath vision element to Pat Narduzzi's coaching tree. The Minnesota version blends the two rather than running either in its original form.
Blitz rate has no single agreed definition across the industry and different charting services publish different numbers for the same season. The figures above are attributed to the outlet that produced them and should not be compared with a figure from a different service.
07
Public record
Flores is the named plaintiff in an employment-discrimination lawsuit against the NFL. It is a matter of public record and is included here for that reason. What follows is the procedural history only, as reported. This site takes no position on the merits, which no court has yet decided.
Sourced to NBC News for the Second Circuit ruling, to CNN via ABC 17 News for the Supreme Court's refusal of certiorari, and to a published law-firm summary of the docket for the district-court history. All three are listed in section 08. Where reports differed on detail, only the points on which they agreed are stated above.
08
Sources
Checked on 12 September 2026. Nothing appears above that is not in one of these.
Pro Football Reference is this site's usual first check for coaching records. Its server returned HTTP 403 to every automated request made while this page was being written, so the Miami season records were confirmed against Wikipedia and the Dolphins' own release instead. If you find an error on this page, please tell us — see our editorial policy for how corrections are handled.
Minnesota Vikings IO is an independent fan site. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to the Minnesota Vikings or the National Football League.
