Breaking Down the Minnesota Vikings' Historic 65% Blitz Strategy

So the Minnesota Vikings are doing something unprecedented. Yes. They are blitzing 65% of the time. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Or are they ignorant like me? What is a blitz? For those at home that never heard that word, what is blitz? What happens during blitz? So in football, you have seven guys line up on the line of scrimmage, you have four guys in the back. The four guys are eligible to go after pass, same thing with the two ends. The five guys in the middle are not eligible, so what do you do with those guys? You make them protected. That's the reason you have an offensive line. You have five protectors. Now, on defense, typically, standard, you send standard, basic is four rushers to come. Yeah, so you have two defensive tackles, two defensive ends, that's your defensive line, four guys, they usually rush, sometimes they do stunts. So it's equal force meets equal force. Kind of, yeah, sort of. For the most part. But when you blitz, you send an extra one or two defenders, so one of your linebackers or one of your defensive backs, or maybe a couple of them, are going to come, and the offensive line are not going to know who. But wait a minute, what happens if you are sending more people to the line? You're leaving yourself open for coverage. Exactly. So you have to hope that you get the quarterback before your coverage is exposed. So what does the offensive do? They'll typically bring in an extra tight end or an extra running back to help protect. If the people are blitzing. And they're trying to run on the outside line. But here's the thing with what the Vikings are doing. I said that the Vikings are blitzing 65% of the time. They're sending in extra rushers. The second place blitzing team does it 35% of the time. So no one does it most of the time. No one leaves their cover. And it's been working for them because they have a great record. And they're breaking the records when it comes to tax. So their thing, so let me, here's what they do. Let me get my two, let's get Marky, let's get Lalo. Check this out, this is what they're doing, cameras we're doing this live, why don't you get the phone so I can show you exactly what they're seeing so you guys are going to line up as a defense, no no no no no, you guys are coming after me so there's, pretend that there's an offensive line here, so what the Minnesota Vikings are doing Yeah, do we got, do we got me here? Okay, so what the Minnesota Vikings are doing, instead of having a defensive line, linebackers and defensive backs, and then the blitz is coming from one of the guys in the back, they're lining an eight-man front. They're putting everybody on the line. So now the offensive line doesn't know who's going to come in. So you know what they'll do? On some plays, they'll have a defensive line come in, but they'll have another defensive line drop back. So the quarterback thinks that guy's coming in. And all of a sudden, he's in coverage. Now he's dropping back, but he has an extra defensive line coming at him. So, it's all about risk versus reward, okay? Do you want to leave yourself exposed in the end, but you know you're going to get to the quarterback before he can even throw? I mean, you see, these guys have no time. They drop back, three-step drop. As soon as he's looking for a receiver, he has four guys around him, you know? And one of the things that you need is full-throwing motion. So, you don't even necessarily need to get to the quarterback. But if you're coming at me and you're stopping the throw right here, Let's get practical about this. They lost their first game. Do you think the rest of the NFL is catching up to this technique, is catching up to this strategy, and they're a little more prepared for both scenarios? So here's what they're doing. They have, the offense, if you're going to be rushing extra guys, you need to know where the soft spot is going to be. You don't necessarily know that at the beginning of the game, but after a while, you get a sense of where the blitz is coming, and you know, okay, if the extra guys are coming from the right, there's going to be an open area to the right. And also, they know which wide receiver is caught, which one is not. They're routing the offense to play on the weak side versus the soft side. Exactly. And the quarterback, and the quarterback for the Detroit, which is, Detroit quarterback, Okay, what he did a good job is he recognizes which one of his receivers is going to be one on one. Typically, NFL defenses are zoned. So you'll have a little bit of a man coverage. But if I get away from you, there's I'm going to run into a zone where there's another defender waiting for me. Yep. But if you're sending in your defenders. The defensive backs are what we call out on an island. You're out there by yourself. You are man-to-man. You've got to stay with that receiver. It's hard in the NFL to stay with that NFL receiver. So when you recognize... Unless you're the ref. Yeah. So when you recognize who is one-on-one... Now, what the Rams try to do with Puka is that they try to put him in motion. To see if the defensive back is following him. If it follows him, then they know it's man on man. If the defensive back on the left side doesn't follow him over to the right, then what do they know? That it's a zone. That means he's going to run into someone else that they haven't identified. So they put him in motion to basically force the defense to play man because they know Puka is open if it's only one guy. So today, what is a more reliable strategy right now as the game is played right now? We've been talking about this in X's and O's. The running backs are getting more play time because of different, you know, the phantasma. Um... What's happening? How is this shifting the game from the offensive side is shaping these new… The reliable used to be what we call cover two, which is a type of zone where the defense will cover the first level and then the safeties are there to cover up anyone that comes through. But when you're blitzing and you're attacking and you're getting sacks Relax when you're stopping the run. You know, you're putting the offense on the heels, so coverage is more dependable, but what happens in coverage, you give up a little play, and a good, patient offense will march down the field, taking advantage of the soft spots. So at some point, you have to attack. At some point, you have to say, we're going to send in our defense, and we're going to try to sack the quarterback, because we can't allow them to just continue to keep up with running plays.