Contenders or Pretenders?

In April, Josh Metellus keyed into the Minnesota Vikings’ facility, snaked through the back hallway and climbed the steps up to the third floor. The building was mostly quiet. A couple of staffers were clicking through documents on their computers. Mostly, though, office doors were closed, and the calm that comes with an NFL offseason felt in full effect.

Metellus weaved through the third floor, turned left around the corner and found exactly what he’d hoped to find: defensive coordinator Brian Flores seated at his desk.

A year earlier, Metellus first met Flores in this same office. The safety/linebacker/slot corner/whatever else was blindsided initially not by Flores’ disposition but by the floor-to-ceiling whiteboard on the left side of the room. Black ink smeared in spots. Shapes and lines depicted formations. Player names were scattered everywhere.

“He had a list of everything that he thinks just thrown onto the wall,” Metellus said several months ago. “Like, everything he’d ever thought of what his defense could be.”

Once his eyes dislodged from the whiteboard, Metellus listened to Flores’ vision of him as a player. Flores pointed to the board. You could do that. He pointed to a different spot. And that. His finger moved again. And that.

Initially, Metellus thought he’d have to choose one. Then the 2023 season came, and Metellus realized Flores seriously thought he could play all of those spots — at once. After the season, he vowed to visit Flores again in 2024 to find out what was next in store.

This past spring, Metellus was ready to hear version 2.0. Again, Flores’ gigantic whiteboard mesmerized him. Different shapes and new names were scribbled all over the place. Metellus was essentially getting a sneak peek at the defensive portion of the rough draft for the team that has taken the NFL by storm in 2024.

The question both then and now was the same: How? How did the Vikings come up with this plan, and how has it worked so well through five games? The answers to those questions are part intentional composition and part spontaneous chemistry.

The Vikings’ pass rush in 2023 ranked 27th in the league in pressure rate. Add cornerbacks but overlook the pass rush, and the cornerbacks would have to cover for too much time for the increased coverage options to matter. Improve the pass rush but stick with the same cornerbacks, and receivers like Tee Higgins would still make game-deciding grabs in coverage.

One Vikings coach described the intended year-over-year modification as a complete upgrade of technological software. Before free agency and the NFL Draft, they sifted through experienced cover corners, interior pass rushers, off-ball linebackers with enhanced coverage range and edge rushers who could both cover and rush the passer. The hope? To find players with these skills who were both smart enough to understand complex concepts and motivated enough to be pushed.

Some players who had previously played for Flores, like Andrew Van Ginkel and Kamu Grugier-Hill, made perfect sense. Others, like Jonathan Greenard, Shaq Griffin, Blake Cashman, Jerry Tillery and Jihad Ward, fit the exact specifications for the roles the Vikings staff envisioned. When discussing these players in meetings, the coaching staff even estimated players’ potential market value in their pitches.

“It was not just, ‘Here’s how we see this guy as a player,'” Vikings assistant head coach Mike Pettine said. “But it was, ‘Here’s how we plan to use this guy.'”

General manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, executive vice president Rob Brzezinski and senior manager of football administration Emily Badis secured many of the Vikings’ defensive targets in March once the free-agency period opened. O’Connell’s time may have been segmented — he was simultaneously directing Minnesota’s pre-draft quarterback evaluation process — but solidifying the other areas of the roster remained pivotal as well.

And because the Vikings had moved away from high-dollar veteran contracts in recent years, they had enough cap space to make more moves. First, they signed running back Aaron Jones. Then, they added quarterback Sam Darnold, punctuating what appears to have been a team-altering period.

Once the Vikings staff executed its vision, not long after Metellus visited Flores’ office, the facility hummed with an unmistakably different energy. The locker room vibrated with hip-hop music played by Greenard and Ward. On the practice field, as players finished workouts, Griffin, a veteran free-agent signing who played for the Texans and Panthers last season, often walked off the grass laughing with his younger teammates.

It gave off the impression of a group of school classmates, thrown together at random, that jelled in a way that they were having fun. They attended Timberwolves playoff games. They caravanned to play golf at Whistling Straits. They met at local country music concerts.

At one point during the summer, Griffin’s brother asked about his new team. How is it? What’s it like up there? A Pro Bowler in 2019, Griffin had already played in the NFL for seven years. He began his career with a Seahawks team that not only produced four straight winning seasons but also was known for being player-led and bubbly under coach Pete Carroll. Yet Griffin could not conjure the proper words to describe what the atmosphere in Minnesota had been like.

“It was a different feeling,” Griffin said. “I had never felt so many professional football players so ready to get back from each break.”

What he didn’t know was that his teammates were finding it similarly difficult to explain their feelings to their family members. “Different” was the same word Jones used in conversations with his mother.

Griffin has thought frequently about this feeling. He wonders if the Vikings staff threaded the needle perfectly on blending veterans and youth. He thinks O’Connell’s leadership style — choosing not to be overbearing — has something to do with it.