Aaron Rodgers explains what makes Brian Flores' Vikings defense different

The Vikings' defense, led by coordinator Brian Flores, is off to a ridiculous start to the 2024 season. It's been the best defense in the league and the catalyst to Minnesota's 5-0 record at their bye week. The stats don't lie; the Vikings are first (by a lot) in defensive DVOA and opponent EPA per play, first in interceptions, second in sacks, and fourth in points against.

Week in and week out, the Vikings have given opposing offenses headaches with a complex scheme and a group of a players that is executing at a very high level. Their latest outstanding performance was a three-interception, three-sack game in London against Aaron Rodgers and the Jets, who averaged 3.6 yards per play and went 5 for 18 on third and fourth down.

Appearing on The Pat McAfee Show on Wednesday, Rodgers mostly talked about the recent firing of head coach Robert Saleh, but he also gave an incredibly in-depth football answer when asked about Flores' defense. Be warned: the four-time MVP went long and got deep into the weeds with the Xs and Os.

"They definitely had a couple wrinkles on third down," Rodgers said. "For the most part, they were dropping interior guys coming in the plan. And they dropped Van Ginkel right into the throwing lane and he had a pick-six on me, which was a great play by him. I think it's more than just the seven up (at the line of scrimmage) stuff, obviously that's going to get the attention, it's how you get to the seven up stuff, and that's winning on first and second down. Because a lot of that shows up in the third and 5, 6 plus. If they're bringing an extra guy than we can block, based on the pre-snap look, it forces you sometimes to make some adjustments, whether in protections or routes, to get the ball out.

"I think what's lost maybe in the conversation around B-Flo — which, he deserves a lot of credit, he's done a really nice job — is how good they've been on first and second down. A lot of movement up front and some different types of fronts. They're in three-down (linemen) personnel and running four-down spacing in some of these fronts, which is different. There's been some teams that have done that, whether it's playing an over front, as the Rams have done at times with Aaron Donald to try to find some singles for him. They were in more of what I call an even G front, where there's a 3-tech (defensive tackle) backside and a 2i frontside.

"Out of that, what they can do, because most teams, if it's a pass play, will put 5 on 5 in that situation, they've created different types of leverage points. Now you have the center sliding to a 2i, you have a guard sliding to a 5 and a tackle sliding to a 9, backside you have a 3 and whatever you want to call the open end. But what they do out of that is they'll fire the Will (LB) at times. So they're taking the (running) back out of the route concept. So you're eliminating check-downs and doing what we like to call replacement fire zones, where they're still bringing four or five guys. They have athletic guys on the edge, like Van Ginkel, who can drop into coverage. So you've eaten up the back, based on being in a 345 G front or even a 325 front, and now you've eliminated the check-down and not eliminated a player in the coverage scheme.

"Very good scheme by him and the execution, obviously, is the most important thing. They have all the different looks with different guys, different spots. They can play (Cover) 2 Sky from it, they can play straight-up Tampa 2, they can play where the corners are the half-field players, they can bring everybody, they can play 1 high out of that, they can play 44 man out of that. They can do a lot of different things and it's a credit to how they practice and the flexibility they have with those players in those positions."

The TL;DR summary of that answer is that the different fronts the Vikings use to have success on early downs help set up their pressure packages on third downs, and the versatility of their scheme makes them hard to predict.

That falls in line with what we've heard about this Vikings defense, which is that everybody has to know how to play a wide range of positions. That allows Flores to get creative and run all kinds of pressures and coverages out of all kinds of pre-snap looks. It's been working incredibly well so far, which is clear when you hear how one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time talks about the scheme.