‘The best time of my life’: Vikings DC Brian Flores making himself at home in Minnesota

EAGAN, Minn. — It was April 2020, and Brian Flores, head coach of the Miami Dolphins, was sitting in front of a camera for a video news conference in his home office. He was about to discuss the Dolphins’ draft, but first, he held his cell phone to the camera.

On the phone’s screen were photos of two men Flores called mentors, both of whom had died in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. One was Myles Coker, a former convicted heroin dealer and champion of prison sentencing reform in New York City. The other was Michael Hankins Sr., whom Flores described as a father figure to kids in Brooklyn.

Flores didn’t know it at the time, but his connection with Coker would play a key role as Flores’ career took dramatic turns. The Dolphins fired him on Jan. 10, 2022, and he filed a class-action lawsuit against the NFL and multiple teams alleging racial discrimination in its hiring practices. After spending 2022 as a Pittsburgh Steelers assistant, Flores was offered the defensive coordinator position with the Minnesota Vikings.

Flores had never lived or worked away from the East Coast, but fortunately, he had two connections in the Minneapolis area: Cliff and Kelvin Coker, the sons of Myles, who settled there nearly two decades ago. The Vikings hired Flores on Feb. 6, 2023, setting up an emotional reunion.

“That’s like family,” Flores said recently.

Reuniting with the Coker brothers helped put in motion a transition that has largely refocused attention on Flores’ football acumen amid the Vikings’ 5-1 start this season. Minnesota has proved a welcoming home as his lawsuit works its way through the courts.

While the external football world speculates on whether he’ll receive another head-coaching job, Flores has quietly built a football and social comfort zone in 20 months with the Vikings.

“When we heard Brian Flores was coming to Minnesota,” Cliff Coker said, “my brother and I wanted to make sure he was surrounded by great people. He’s like a brother to us. And I know that he genuinely loves how warmly Minnesota has embraced him and his family.”

With the blessing of general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and coach Kevin O’Connell, his presence inside the building extends beyond that of a typical defensive coordinator. For example, Flores met multiple times this summer with rookie quarterback J.J. McCarthy, before the No. 10 pick suffered a season-ending knee injury, to provide tips on NFL defensive strategy, and he was central to the acquisition of most of the defensive free agents the Vikings acquired this spring.

He and his wife, Jen, have hosted social gatherings at their home for players, coaches and families in each of the past two summers, and that fellowship has continued during the season with standing invitations for Thursday evening gatherings at local restaurants.

The Flores family has embraced the suburb of Eden Prairie, where they settled, thanks to a realtor with whom the Cokers connected him.

Flores co-coached his sons’ flag football team there last spring. And he even credited the father of one of his daughter’s friends for suggesting this spring that he review the tape on pending NFL free agent linebacker Blake Cashman, a graduate of Eden Prairie High School who played at the University of Minnesota. The Vikings signed Cashman, at Flores’ urging, on the first day of free agency in March. He’s their leading tackler, despite missing a game because of a toe injury.

Flores will bring the NFL’s top-rated defense, per DVOA (defense-adjusted value over average), to face the Los Angeles Rams Thursday night (8:15 p.m. ET, Prime Video).

He declined to discuss his experience in Minnesota with ESPN in detail, saying he wanted to keep his focus on the team. During training camp, however, he said he was having “the best time of my life.” More recently, speaking to the small group of reporters who cover the team, Flores left little doubt about his current state of ease.

“Minnesota has welcomed me with open arms,” Flores said, “Me and my family, they’ve shown us a lot of love, and I’m showing Minnesota a lot of love back. And really that’s talking about the state and the people here, but obviously this building as well.”

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FLORES’ LAWSUIT, FILED in January 2022 and amended two months later to include additional coaches, is stalled in a preliminary dispute because the NFL believes it should be subject to internal arbitration rather than litigation, according to court documents.

Although Flores has been one of the NFL’s top-performing assistant coaches this season, the ongoing litigation could prove a significant obstacle to parlaying his defensive success into another head-coaching job.

Asked about that possibility in the spring, following a coaching cycle during which he received no head-coaching interviews, Flores said: “There’s no way to know” if it’s an impediment. Either way, there are other potential obstacles.

Two of his former players in Miami, quarterbacks Tua Tagovailoa and Ryan Fitzpatrick, have spoken publicly since his departure about the way he coached and treated Tagovailoa. Fitzpatrick said during an NFL Prime Video broadcast that Tagovailoa was “broken” by Flores’ coaching style. Tagovailoa referred to Flores as a “terrible person” during an interview on “The Dan Le Batard Show.”

Flores was respectful in response to the Tagovailoa interview, saying he was “genuinely, genuinely happy for the success that Tua has had” and adding there were things he “could do better for sure.”

He also said he has reflected on his time in Miami and looked for ways to evolve and improve. But those close to him don’t sense he has done so explicitly to burnish his head-coaching résumé.

“It’s just not his ‘why,'” Vikings pass game coordinator/defensive backs coach Daronte Jones said. “He’s deserving to accomplish that again and get that opportunity, but it’s not a driving force and not something we ever talk about.”

Said safety Josh Metellus: “Honestly that might be what the media is worried about, but what we see is a guy who is just worried about coaching good football.

“He’s the Vikings’ defensive coordinator and wants to win doing that.”

There have been no hints of player distaste for Flores’ style; in fact, NFL players ranked him as the league’s fourth-best defensive coordinator to play for in the annual NFL Players Association team report card project. At the very least, Vikings defensive players are well-equipped to thrive in the intense environment he creates.

“Personalities differ, obviously,” Metellus said. “But you can just tell it comes from a place of passion not from a place of nagging, or when you feel a coach is on you just to be on you. It comes from a place of, ‘I know what you’ve got and I know what you can do, let me see it’ kind of thing.”

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THE VIKINGS HAVE spent two years collecting a group of players with similar mindsets. Of the 17 players this season who have received at least 70 defensive snaps, 15 have three or more years of experience. Only one is a rookie, and the group’s average time spent in the NFL is 6.6 seasons. Nine are newcomers to the Vikings this season who Flores helped identify and advocated for internally. Three had played for him previously with the New England Patriots or Dolphins.

According to research by ESPN’s Bill Barnwell, those numbers give the Vikings the NFL’s oldest defense, based on snap-weighted ages.

Snap-weighted age so far for 2024

Five oldest teams: MIN, SF, ATL, MIA, NYJ
Five youngest teams: GB, NYG, JAX, PIT, LV pic.twitter.com/0vR1bIInA1

— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) October 21, 2024

“I think he wants to be around the right ingredients,” said inside linebackers coach Mike Siravo, who was a graduate assistant at Boston College for two seasons when Flores played for the Eagles. “That’s people who are accountable, who hold themselves to a high standard, who don’t make excuses and have a get-it-done mindset.

“Not to say that wasn’t here before, but as you grow older, those are the kinds of people you want to be around.”

Flores said this summer he has “tried to apply the things that I could do better and the things that I’ve learned over the last two, three years.” Vikings players who have spoken to ESPN over the course of the season have met him halfway.

“It’s challenging,” said linebacker Andrew Van Ginkel, who played three seasons for Flores with the Dolphins and then reunited with him this spring. “He’s competitive and he wants to win and he wants to have the best defense in the league. He wants to be the best.

“He always says that him getting here was hard, and he loves it hard. He loves a challenge. That’s what makes tough people tough.”

Linebacker Kamu Grugier-Hill was drafted by the Patriots in 2016 when Flores was the team’s linebackers coach. He later played for Flores in Miami during the 2020 season.

“You’ve got to be coachable, number one, and open to change,” Grugier-Hill said. “We don’t do traditional and conventional things here. So if you’re a guy that has done things one way the entire time, this is probably not a spot for you.”

Cornerback Stephon Gilmore first met Flores when he signed with the Patriots in 2017.

“He’s somebody who will keep it real with you,” Gilmore said. “He’s a good person, but he wants to get the best out of you as a player, so he’ll do whatever he can to do that and hold you accountable to bring that out of you.

“I think all coaches should be like that. The sport we play, you can’t be sensitive.”

Metellus had been largely a special teams player for three seasons in Minnesota before Flores tapped him for a hybrid safety/linebacker role that has put him on the field for 92.9% of the defensive snaps since the start of the 2023 season. He described Flores’ style as being “very hard on you” and not “in a loving way, because it’s football, but in a way that comes from the heart.”

He added: “But I like that type of coaching. I’ve always had that type of coaching and it just resonates with me. I want to be great. I don’t want somebody telling me how many good things I did. I want somebody coaching me up and telling me what I can do better to get better.”

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JONES, THE VIKINGS’ pass game coordinator/defensive backs coach, keeps a page in his notebook for what he calls “Flo Thoughts.” He has found that Flores’ mind “works differently,” he said, and he doesn’t want to forget the way Flores arrived at some of his schematic ideas.

In the end, however, Jones said the time the Vikings’ defense spends together away from the field is no less important than the wild schemes Flores devises and employs.

“What you’re building is relationships, and you’re building camaraderie,” Jones said. “Seeing guys outside of the building, and they get to see you outside of the building, the genuine relationships.

“This is a people’s business, and he’s all about relationships. He gets the players around his kids. The players bring their kids, and that’s how you get a good family environment. You’d be surprised what can happen if you just step away for a little bit and get to know people on a personal basis.”

This year’s summer gathering at the Flores home, Metellus said, included catered food, shooting hoops in an indoor basketball court — a staple for pro athletes in Minnesota during the cold winters — and more than a dozen new families getting to know one another. Gilmore attended a few days after signing a free agent contract, and Flores recently said he was shocked to see how much Gilmore’s oldest son — now 9 — had grown since he last saw him in New England.

“Flo will always do his thing,” Gilmore said. “But the culture here in Minnesota is just different.”

Indeed, Flores has benefited from O’Connell’s work to establish a player-centric work environment that has earned rave reviews in the annual NFLPA survey.

Families attend almost every training camp practice, and after one of them this summer, Flores introduced himself to the parents of rookie defensive tackle Levi Drake Rodriguez. He then spent nearly 15 minutes asking them about their son, part of a player-by-player effort to “figure out what buttons to push or buttons not to push,” Flores said.

“The culture Flo has established on defense has been in line with what [O’Connell] has for the culture of the team,” Jones said. “That’s off the field, but also on the field, where we’re determining the style of play in a game and just attacking on both sides of the ball. So Flo was a perfect fit for [O’Connell], and that has made his transition here that much smoother.”

And when he is away from the Vikings’ facility, Flores and his family have an extended set of relationships forged through their friendship with the Cokers and their families. In 1991, Myles Coker was sentenced to life in prison for dealing heroin. Although federal sentencing guidelines for drug offenses were loosened shortly thereafter and allowed for retroactive adjustments, he served 23 years.

“Our dad loved Brian very, very much,” Cliff Coker said. “And just watching him and hearing about his success throughout the years, it was just always a talking point for our father and us, and it was always a happy conversation.”

While the football world wonders if Flores will become a head coach again, having the Cokers nearby provides a “family vibe” to living in Minnesota, Flores said. He might appear comfortable, but that’s not his style — “I don’t think he’s ever comfortable,” Siravo said, “and that’s what makes him great.”