The Minnesota Vikings don’t just have a great defense, it’s borderline historic.
Pro Football Focus’ Timo Riske clustered every defense from the past five years to find schematic similarities and differences between the 160 separate variations. He found that the 2023 Vikings’ defense was the furthest away from any other in the study, making it the most unique defense in the past five years.
For a short definition, clustering is a method data scientists usually use to scout how a player was utilized in an offense. They take multiple data points from a player, such as a corner’s pre-snap positioning and how often he’s asked to blitz, and compare it to others to find similarities and differences in their usage. Riske used this method to determine how defensive coordinators utilized different coverages to attack NFL offenses.
Riske found that Minnesota had several aspects of its scheme that made it unique, including its insane usage of both cover-zero and cover-two. The league average for cover-zero and cover-two are 4.0% and 10.3%, respectively. Brian Flores’ Vikings are running these two coverages at a rate of 11.5% and 22.6%. The teams that are closest to them, just in 2023, are three teams that run cover-zero at a rate of 7.1% (New England, New York and Arizona) and the Chicago Bears that run cover-two at a rate of 18.1%.
Flores has fielded a true anomaly on the defensive side of the football. As Cody Alexander has stated, Flores is playing a completely different game from anyone else in the NFL. It has resulted in a lot of confusion from opposing quarterbacks and a top-ten defense from a unit that was firmly at the bottom of the league at the end of last year.
