Throughout the 2025 NFL season, SB Nation’s Doug Farrar will write about the game’s Secret Superstars — those players whose performances might slip under the radar for whatever reasons. In this installment, we focus on Minnesota Vikings linebacker Eric Wilson, who used Brian Flores’ blitz concepts to unravel Jared Goff — the one quarterback you’re not supposed to blitz.
Through the first eight weeks of the 2025 season, Jared Goff of the Detroit Lions was the one quarterback you did NOT want to blitz under any circumstances, because Goff was going to kill you with that stuff. Goff had been blitzed on 25% of his dropbacks in that time period, and he completed 37 of 50 passes (74.0%) for 507 yards (10.1 yards per attempt) four touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 132.7. Goff’s EPA per play jumped from +0.291 to +0.657 when blitzed, and that’s what Brian Flores and the Minnesota Vikings had to deal with last Sunday.
Some coaches would coach scared against such a quarterback. Of course, Flores did the exact opposite. Only the Atlanta Falcons (40.9%) have a higher blitz rate this season than the Vikings’ 40.6%, and no defense has a higher pressure rate than Minnesota’s 30.7%, so Flores was going to ride or die with what he does.
And it worked. The Vikings blitzed Goff on 14 of his 42 dropbacks, and Goff completed eight of 13 passes (61.5% against the blitz) for 74 yards (5.7 yards per attempt), no touchdowns, no interceptions, his first sack against a blitz all season, a passer rating of 90.3, and a negative EPA per play of -0.074.
How did Goff’s fortunes change so quickly? Flores sent linebackers Blake Cashman and Eric Wilson up the A-gaps incessantly — it was like Mike Zimmer was back in the building! — and Wilson feasted on those concepts. Overall against the Lions, Wilson had two sacks and six total pressures, and what he did up the middle in those mug looks was the key.
Goff still got off a few good passes when the Vikings mugged him up because that’s who he is, but the disruptions had a lot to do with the eventual win.
Postgame, Lions head coach Dan Campbell was not happy about the pressure… because Campbell and his crew knew what was coming.
“Self-induced,” Campbell said. “Oh yeah. Very disappointing. We knew what we were going to get going into this. We knew there would be some wrinkles, but there was nothing that we hadn’t seen before. We did not – we didn’t handle it. We did not handle it well. I know we got beat on a couple of them, just physically beat on a couple that we expect not to. We expect more out of our guys. But some of it, we acted like it was something exotic – it wasn’t. We just didn’t handle it well. We weren’t on the same page. We were not on the same page.”
Goff was a bit more gracious.
“Yeah, I thought they did a good job pass rushing; they had a good plan on defense,” the quarterback said. “They always are hard to play against defensively. They do a good job over there, and I have a ton of respect for the way they do things. Yeah, they got after us up front a little bit and gave us some pressures we hadn’t seen, and did a good job on defense.”
But did those mug looks cause schisms along the offensive line?
“Yeah, a couple times. I mean, it’s inexcusable, but they make it hard, and I think caused us to have a few miscommunications.”
Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell was asked specifically about blitzing that much against a quarterback who usually rips it up.
“Yeah, it was just a mixture. It was a mixture, it was a lot of showing, pressure, and kind of varying up the looks from there, showing man-to-man and playing some other things out of it. I just thought the plan on both sides that the coaching staff put together was the right plan to win this game. They’re each their own, and we’re going to have to do the same thing next week and on from there. We’ve certainly got a lot to build on, lot of things we can clean up to play even tighter and play even more consistent as a football team, but still complementary when we need to respond to the adversity slipping here and there, or activating, the momentum changing.
“It’s all a part of football. We talk about a lot of things sometimes, and rightly so. That locker room is – I absolutely love these players, I love this team, I love our coaching staff in weeks like this where in many cases it can go one way or the other. There wasn’t a moment all week, despite some of the things going on, and some of the things that maybe were tempting to hang that left, they stayed together all the way through and get us back to .500 and two-and-zero in the division.”
Cornerback Byron Murphy wanted to bring specific attention to Eric Wilson’s efforts.
“He went out there and balled,” Murphy said of Wilson. “But he’s been doing that all season.”
True. For the season, Wilson has three sacks, 15 total pressures, 36 solo tackles, 22 stops, and he’s aligned all over the defense — 286 snaps in the box, 112 on the line, 11 in the slot, and a handful at outside cornerback. You have to be both versatile and effective to play in Brian Flores’ defense, and Eric Wilson understands the assignment.
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