After helping the team's defense take some massive strides last season, Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores is hoping the unit can perform even better during the upcoming campaign.
If Flores is able to help transform the Vikings defense into one of the 10 best in the league in 2024, it's possible that he could get an opportunity to become a head coach in the NFL for the second time in the last handful of years.
At the same time, some believe Flores's failures on and off of the field as the head coach of the Miami Dolphins from 2019 to 2021 are still too difficult for a team to overlook when possibly considering him for a head coaching vacancy.
Will Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores ever be an NFL head coach again?
During a recent episode of the "Locked On NFL Scouting with the Draft Dudes" podcast, co-hosts Kyle Crabbs and Joe Marino spent a portion of the show talking about the possibility of Flores getting another shot in the future to be an NFL head coach.
Based on what happened during his time with the Dolphins, Crabbs shared what sort of team situation would probably be best for Flores to become a head coach in the league again.
"If you have a blank slate and you choose that you want to hire the head coach first, and the general manager is going to be an extension of the head coach from a football operations standpoint, I think that's the kind of situation [where] Brian Flores would make sense.
But if you have an incumbent general manager who wants to come in, and we're going to hire the head coach, and there's going to be this vertical, or even horizontal, pecking order as far as your football operations [goes] that doesn't have Brian Flores sitting atop a pyramid, it's probably not going to be the right situation for him based off of what we know."
Marino then shared his thoughts on the possible situation and made it very clear that he doesn't view it as one that most teams around the league likely desire.
"Why are you going to sign up for that!? It's such a limited way to run your operation. I think you have to be collaborative.
...I don't want to limit the people that I can bring in, whether it's executives, coaches, personnel, to align with Brian Flores. I could just hire a different coach. I don't have to have Brian Flores."
To be fair to Flores, his first head coaching job with Miami came after spending more than a decade on the staff of the New England Patriots, a franchise that had its legendary head coach, Bill Belichick, also as its general manager.
So, for Flores, he was used to seeing a head coach have almost complete control over his roster and his coaching staff. But when he was with the Dolphins, he quickly found out that he didn't get anywhere close the control that Belichick had with the Patriots, and it ultimately led to Miami moving on from Flores after the 2021 season.
After the 2024 season, it will be more than three years since Flores was the Dolphins head coach. Following his departure from Miami, he spent the 2022 campaign with the Pittsburgh Steelers, and he's been Minnesota's defensive coordinator since the 2023 offseason.
During the last few years, Flores has been able to see how multiple franchises operate from the inside. Could some of the things he's recently learned cause him to change his approach to being a head coach if he's given another opportunity?
For the majority of the teams around the NFL, the level of success on the field is typically at the top of the priority list.
So, if Flores goes out during the upcoming 2024 season and helps turn the Vikings defense into a top-10 or top-five unit, it's probably going to be a little easier for teams with head coaching vacancies in 2025 to move past some of the negative things that took place when he was with the Dolphins.
