Vikings want chaos against Bills and Josh Allen might welcome it

ORCHARD PARK - In speaking with Buffalo Bills offensive tackle Spencer Brown on Thursday, one takeaway is that he seemingly has a warped sense of enjoyment.

“It’s challenging, but at the same time it’s pretty fun,” Brown said when asked about getting ready to go against the Minnesota Vikings’ blitz-crazy defense. “I watched their game two weeks ago on the flight (home from Las Vegas). Just watching it, I was really looking forward to this week and seeing what they do on the field.”

Brown is the ultimate competitor, a football warrior in every sense, but he may want to be careful what he wishes for Monday night when the Bills invade the noise palace that is U.S. Bank Stadium to play the Vikings.

Buffalo’s offensive line is going to get the ultimate test against diabolical Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores who must have been wronged by some quarterback in his past and is now hellbent on making every one of their lives miserable, not to mention the guys like Brown who are charged with keeping quarterbacks in one piece.

The Vikings have the No. 1 scoring defense in the NFL allowing just 13.3 points per game. Their seven-game yield of 93 points is their fewest at this point of a season since 1986, and their 10 points allowed in the fourth quarter are the fewest in the NFL through seven games since the 2019 New England Patriots allowed just seven.

Minnesota’s success is rooted in Flores’ reliance on pressuring the quarterback into oblivion with five, six or even seven rushers at a time, and he does this at a stunningly high blitz rate of 71% of the plays. The next closest team in terms of blitz frequency is the Panthers at 42.6%, while Buffalo ranks 10th at 34.4%, a figure that rose dramatically because of last week’s game against third-string Baltimore QB Joe Fagnano. Before that, the Bills were down around 29%.

Why the Vikings blitz more than any NFL defense

“It's not even how much they blitz; it's how productive they are when they do blitz,” said Josh Allen. “They bring it from both sides, they'll blitz the middle, they'll drop guys that you think are coming. It's a very in-tune defense. Those guys are very smart, they're playing so well together. It's hard to game plan for a team like this because there's not any weaknesses.”

In the last two weeks, they blitzed the Colts’ Daniel Jones on 85.2% of his dropbacks, and last week they came after the Lions’ Jared Goff 79.3% of the time, per Sumer Sports charting. Not surprisingly, that has helped Minnesota rank No. 1 in both sack percentage (10.5%) and pressure rate (45.8%).

“Whatever you practice, it's not going to look like it, it's not going to be at the tempo and the speed and the physicality that it is in game, right?” coach Joe Brady said. “They're obviously an elite defense, and they make you work the entire game and that's why they're No. 1 in the league right now.

“You’ve got to trust your rules, trust your technique, the communication has to be elite. You're on the road, it's always going to be hard. They obviously do an outstanding job to make it stressful on you on every single play.”

How Josh Allen can counter the Vikings’ aggressive blitz

How the line holds up, and how Allen deals with the pressure, could determine the outcome. Thus far, Allen has been blitzed on 33.2% of his dropbacks and he has made teams pay. He has completed 66.7% of his passes at 8.6 yards per attempt with three TDs, though he does have two picks and has suffered four sacks.

Beyond that, what may give Flores pause is Allen’s escapability which can be lethal against a blitzing defense. Counting all passing plays, he has scrambled 19 times and his 204 scramble yards are fourth-most in the league and they include a league-best 11 runs of 10 yards or more by a QB.

Then again, maybe Flores won’t care, just as he didn’t against Jones who is a mobile QB. Three other mobile QBs faced his wrath and he blitzed Caleb Williams of the Bears 76.1% in Week 2, the Dolphins’ Malik Willis 60% in Week 4, and Tyler Shough of the Saints 61% of his dropbacks.

Bills offensive line braces for a different kind of Vikings test

Brown made the point that what makes Minnesota unique is it doesn’t have a superstar pass rusher like Houston’s duo of Danielle Hunter and Will Anderson, the Lions’ Aidan Hutchinson, the Raiders’ Maxx Crosby, or the Rams’ Aaron Donald, players you game plan specifically for. The Vikings have multiple players like Dallas Turner, Andrew Van Ginkel, Jalen Redmond and Blake Cashman working together in a scheme that stresses the entire line, plus chipping tight ends or backs.

“I don’t think they have guys who are going to be all-world beaters … they don’t have those guys, but when you play a team where they all just play super well together, that’s probably a more dangerous team than just playing against All-Pros or future Hall of Famers,” Brown said. “You get guys who just play for each other and play hard and they’re in the right spots, it’s a challenge. I look forward to it.”

Like Brown, Allen is addicted to competition and challenges, and he agreed with his right tackle that the Vikings are, as he said, “Fun to watch from a football perspective. But it's hard to watch from the opposing quarterback perspective, where it's like we're trying to figure this out.

“You have to be on top of it. I've got to be make sure that our protection rules are where they need to be. Have a plan going into it and if that plan's not true, we need to adjust in game. It definitely presents a lot of challenges for an offensive scheme the way that they're doing it.”

Sal Maiorana has covered the Buffalo Bills for more than four decades including 37 years as the full-time beat writer/columnist for the D&C. He has written numerous books about the history of the team, and he is also co-host of the BLEAV in Bills podcast/YouTube show. He can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com, and you can follow him on X @salmaiorana and on Bluesky @salmaiorana.bsky.social.

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Vikings want chaos against Bills and Josh Allen might welcome it