Packers Week 1 Preview: Why the Vikings are dangerous

The Minnesota Vikings went 9-8 last season despite the worst regular quarterback play I've ever seen. Something called Max Brosmer started a game against the Detroit Lions wherein he completed nine passes for 51 yards while taking seven sacks for 48 yards, and still somehow his team won the game.

The Vikings managed to pull off a winning record and finish ahead of the Lions via the head-to-head tiebreaker because their defensive coordinator Brian Flores is basically Tony Stark building the arc reactor in a cave in the desert with a box of scraps . He's unlike any other defensive coordinator in the league in that he almost never rushes the "normal" amount of people. It's always too many or too few, and it's never who you would expect. He's part necromancer, part general, part abstract painter. He's not thinking four moves ahead, he's performing moves in some other game he knows you will end up playing later but haven't even heard of yet. And for the Green Bay Packers , specifically, Brian Flores is going to be a problem on Sunday.

If the Packers were fully healthy, I wouldn't worry so much. If they had everyone going, I think they're familiar enough with the Flores attack that they would be able to work around it. I also think if they were playing the Bears, who have a terrible defense, or the Lions, who have a good-but-conventional defense, I would be picking the Packers to win this week. But as of Wednesday, Zack Bako-Bewele and Aaron Banks were limited in practice. I think Bako-Bewele probably plays, but there's a good chance he will be limited as he was much of last year, and if he can't go, the disaster that is Anthony Belton is likely to step in.

That's only a part of the problem though, as the interior of the Packers' line is easily their weakest unit, and their biggest vulnerability is with some combination of Sean Rhyan , Aaron Banks, Jacob Monk , and/or Jager Burton being charged with keeping the Flores blitzes at bay. Do you trust any of those guys to make the right read when Dallas Turner suddenly stunts inside, followed by Andrew Van Ginkel directly behind him while Jalen Redmond drops into coverage? Banks has been terrible in Green Bay , even when healthy, and there is no evidence he is healthy. The rest of them are, at best, "young and promising," but without experience against what Flores brings, this is very worrisome. They're even not very good when defenders are running right at them in predictable ways!

It's just a bad matchup, and it's made worse by the fact that Minnesota will likely be completely and totally unconcerned about the Packers' running game, with poor line play and no Josh Jacobs around. This will allow them to come after Jordan Love all day without much fear of getting burned. And since they coaxed Harrison Smith out of retirement to play safety, the Vikings will also have the benefit of a coach-on-the-field presence to help clean up any mistakes the younger Minnesota defenders make in the back end.

All of that said, the Vikings are not some juggernaut, and they have plenty of exploitable flaws in their own right. Gone are Jonathan Allen and Javon Hargrave (the latter headed to the Packers, where he too is limited in practice). Gone, most importantly, is Jonathan Greenard . The Vikings definitely lost some talent, and they definitely lack the experience necessary to run Flores' scheme perfectly. But their sack leaders from last season, (Dallas Turner, Andrew Van Ginkel, Eric Wilson , and Jalen Redmond) are all still on the team, and all perfectly capable of blitzing. Their leaders in passes defended (Van Ginkel, Harrison Smith, Byron Murphy , Josh Mettellus, and Isaiah Rodgers ) are all still on the team. There wasn't that much turnover. They've all played this system before.

Flores also seems to be the rare coordinator that is able to defy the highly variable nature of year-to-year defensive variance. One reason the Vikings are a popular pick to finish last in the division is that it's almost impossible to maintain defensive excellence for multiple seasons in a row. The Vikings have finished in the top three in FTN's DVOA metric for two consecutive seasons , and in the FTN Almanac author Dan Pizzuta points out that their projection system has the defense projected as about league average, but that if anyone can defy the odds, it might be Flores.

Over the course of the entire season I suspect the Vikings' defense is closer to tenth than first, as personnel absolutely matters. But for this game specifically? Andrew Van Ginkel is going to be abusing Monk/Belton/Banks over, and over, and over. Minnesota swept the Lions last year largely because Flores is so adept at finding the weak link on the other side of the field and exploiting it until you are forced to take that player off the field. Against the Lions, that was all-world running back Jahmyr Gibbs , who is amazing at everything but pass protection where he held a 50.5 pass blocking grade at PFF . Every time Gibbs was on the field, Flores overloaded the line and managed to get a blitzer singled up on him, resulting in five sacks of Jared Goff in each of their two games.

The Vikings had a 51.1% blitz rate last season, with the next-highest defense coming in at 39%. On early downs they blitzed even more at 54.7% of the time. If you can pick up the Vikings' blitz, you can almost certainly hurt them, and my hope for this game is that running back Chris Brooks , who is good in pass pro, and tight end Mark Redman see plenty of time to help out. But this matchup stinks for Green Bay, on the road, in a noisy indoor stadium, where Flores and Kevin O'Connell have had forever to prepare.

Worst of all, the Packers will not be able to fall back on terrible quarterback play with Kyler Murray now running the show. A quick reminder that this team went 13-4 just two seasons ago with a similar offensive unit (finishing 9th in points scored) and Sam Darnold at the helm before anyone thought Sam Darnold could be anything at all. Justin Jefferson finished that season with 1,533 yards and 10 touchdowns. I don't think Murray is great, but I don't think he has to be, and before Ben Johnson was the toast of the NFL as an offensive mind, Kevin O'Connell was right there in the conversation.

I am optimistic about the Packers overall. I think they are very talented up and down the roster (with a few small exceptions), and I even think they will get the line sorted eventually. Right now, however, other than facing an opponent like Seattle or Houston , this is as bad an opening matchup as they could have gotten given their current weaknesses and level of health.