Most of the attention on the Minnesota Vikings last season was on J.J. McCarthy and the offense. But was there actually more drama on the defensive side of the ball?
Vikings highly-touted defensive coordinator Brian Flores received an extension from the club on January 21. While the length and size of the deal were not reported, they would have had to have been pretty good to entice Flores back to a DC role when he was interviewing for several head coaching positions around the league.
Flores interviewed for both the Baltimore Ravens and the Pittsburgh Steelers vacant head coaching positions, with the latter even conducting an in-person interview.
The only open position he didn’t interview for in the AFC North was the Cleveland Browns job. Not that they didn’t want him.
Cleveland sports radio personality Adam the Bull said that he’d been hoping for Brian Flores to be the new head coach of the Browns. He believes that Flores’ tenure in Minnesota has vindicated the oft-criticized head coach.
However, when Adam asked Mike Pettine (who worked with Flores in Minnesota for the last two years and recently retired) what his “thoughts” were on Flores, Pettine followed the age-old rule: if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything.
“Probably not many that I would prefer to share,” Pettine admitted. “I mean, we didn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of things.”
Pettine, who is 15 years older than Flores and who has been in the NFL coaching ranks for 5-6 more years, clearly did not like the way that Flores operated.
Mike Pettine disliked Brian Flores so much he moved to the offense in 2025
And that meant that, despite Pettine having come on in 2022 as an assistant head coach, a year before Brian Flores came on as DC in 2023, Flores won the power struggle.
Pettine's title changed from “assistant head coach” to “assistant head coach/outside linebackers coach” for 2024 and 2025. But he says that this past year his relationship with Flores was so bad that he spent most of his time with head coach Kevin O’Connell on the offense.
“That’s why I spent this past year on offense, I was there in … ‘23 and ‘24 on defense,” Pettine revealed. “So, I’ll take the high road on that one.”
This isn’t the first time Flores has butted heads with someone within his organization. Most notably, QB Tua Tagovailoa thought Flores was too hard on him when they were in Miami together. With the way the QB’s career has gone since, one would at least have to say Flores was not wrong.
And we feel the same way here. Pettine has been getting recycled around the league ever since his failed stint as Browns head coach in 2014-2015. He’s never even been extended at an NFL job, so that’s probably why Flores’ extension stings him that much more.
Minnesota’s defense was No. 7 in scoring and No. 3 in total defense in 2025. Flores’ unit was the main reason the team managed a winning 9-8 record. And his players clearly love him based on how they defended him through the Tagovailoa mess.
Obviously, he’s doing something right, the Pettines of the world be damned.