Justin Herbert Was Outstanding vs. the Vikings

There must be something in the water that these NFL defensive coordinators are drinking. Wink Martindale blitzed the 49ers on 84.6% of their dropbacks last Thursday night. Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores then one-upped him on Sunday by blitzing Justin Herbert 85.7% of the time.

It didn’t go well for either defense.

Against the Vikings, Herbert completed 40 of 47 passes for 405 yards and 3 touchdowns. That included a line of 34-for-40, 317 yards, and 3 touchdowns against the blitz. He was sacked just once and did not turn the ball over.

Flores’ Scheme

When offenses prepare for Brian Flores, they know they’re going to have to deal with an aggressive scheme that stresses the protection. Flores loves to threaten the A-gaps and crowd the line of scrimmage with one more defender than the offense can block. Then he’ll go back and forth between bringing everyone and dropping defenders out.

At its core, the scheme is designed to waste blockers in protection, create free rushers, or generate huge mismatches. Here’s a quick example from early in the game on Sunday. You can see that the Vikings had 6 potential pass rushers on the line of scrimmage against the Chargers’ empty formation (just 5 blockers):

This forced the O-line into a full slide. Here, they slid to their right:

The 4 interior rushers for the Vikings then read the protection. The two defenders to the side of the slide dropped out underneath to take away any quick routes in the middle of the field. The other two rushed. The edge rusher away from the slide had a free path to the quarterback: