Blitzmagic: How the Vikings Defense Has Come Into Its Own

The Vikings defense has turned around from one of the league's worst to one of the league's most exciting — if still a work in progress. But working up to league average is tough. How did they do it?

Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images

It’s been impossible to see how radically the Vikings defense has changed under defensive coordinator Brian Flores. Against the Chicago Bears, the Vikings blitzed quarterback Justin Fields on 70.5 percent of his dropbacks and backup quarterback Tyson Bagent on 93.3 percent of his dropbacks, for a complete blitz rate of 81.3 percent.

Their dominating performance is a good reason to think that they might be on their way to turning it around.

The defense has neither been disappointing nor impressive on the whole. Ranking 16th in EPA allowed per play, 15th in DVOA and 22nd in opponent-adjusted points allowed, the Vikings defense is performing at around the NFL average and ahead of where it was last year.

In a way, that’s a credit to Flores, who is working with substantially less talent than the defense had last year. Missing Eric Kendricks, Za’Darius Smith, Dalvin Tomlinson, Patrick Peterson and a few key depth pieces, the Vikings defense didn’t have much hope of improving, even after investing draft and free agency resources at some of those positions.

Hurting things even further had been the absence of Marcus Davenport, signed to fill in the hole left by Smith. Though not every position change has resulted in a net loss in talent – Ivan Pace Jr. might provide more to the defense than Kendricks could have – it’s largely been an uphill battle for the defense who, at best, hope to tread water while the offense puts the game away.

The brief return of Davenport to the lineup coincided with a shift in the Vikings’ defensive performance. In the first three weeks of the season, the Vikings ranked 26th in expected points allowed per play, but have ranked seventh since then.

Naturally, a good chunk of that has to do with who they played – two of the last three games were quarterbacked, for the most part, by struggling rookies and had struggling offenses. But it is possible to adjust for that.

By taking a team’s average expected point output and subtracting it from that week’s performance, we get the defensive performance over expectation. The Panthers and Bears are bad offenses, but the Vikings played them better than almost any other defense has this year. That’s pretty meaningful.

We can add up the “defensive performance over expected” for every team, and from that can get the overall performance of the Vikings. They rank 13th overall for the season and sixth in the last three weeks.  

The Vikings announced that Davenport would be headed to injured reserve, which could stall the defensive improvement we’ve seen, but it certainly seems like they’ve hit their stride.

They’ve been unique about it, too. The Vikings defense was expected to blitz quite a bit under Flores, but the extent to which they’ve sent extra rushers is beyond even the most aggressive expectations of outside observers.

Last year, the three most blitz-heavy teams in the NFL were the New York Giants, Arizona Cardinals and Miami Dolphins, per SportRadar. They blitzed at a rate of 39.7 percent, 34.5 percent and 33.3 percent, respectively, on passing downs.

This year, the Vikings are leading the league in blitz rate at 57.9 percent. They are the only team in the league to blitz on over have of passing downs and it’s not particularly close. The second-place Patriots blitz at a rate of 43.4 percent. The difference in blitz percentage between first and second place is the same as the difference between second place and 14th place.

Early in the season, it would have been easy to conclude that because the Vikings were a bad defense and they lead the league in blitzing, they should probably blitz less.

They didn’t. And improved anyway.

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