If you didn’t think that Senior Defensive Assistant/LB Coach Brian Flores wasn’t a defensive mastermind, Myles Jack would probably say those are fighting words.
Shortly after signing with the Pittsburgh Steelers as a free agent this spring, Jack mentioned that Flores was one of the key reasons why he chose to join the Steelers, praising his resume as a former head coach of the Miami Dolphins and detail-oriented nature.
Now at the conclusion of the first padded practice of training camp, Jack’s stance on Flores hasn’t wavered. If anything, he’s only been more blown away by Flores’s attention to detail as a student of the game.
“He’s brought a different perspective on ball,” Jack said after practice to reporters according to video provided by Pittsburgh Tribune-Review’s Chris Adamski. “I’ve learned a lot just by listening to him speak. I pretty much write down everything he says even if it doesn’t actually pertain to what we are learning. He just has a perspective on things and being a head coach, it’s really made me look at football in a completely different light.”
Brain Flores’ coaching style isn’t anything new as his detail-oriented, process-driven focus has been drilled into his head ever since coming into the league back in 2004 when he got his start with the New England Patriots as a scouting assistant. Flores would climb the ladder under the watchful eye of coaching legend Bill Belichick, becoming a special teams assistant in 2008 and then transitioning to the defensive side of the football in 2011, holding the titles of defensive assistant, safeties coach, and linebackers coach/defensive play-caller for the Patriots before becoming Miami’s head coach in 2019.
Being trusted to call the defense by a defensive mastermind like Belichick for a Super Bowl-winning team, Flores has made himself one of the most respected defensive minds in the game. Jack said as much calling him a “head coach” back in OTAs and mandatory minicamp, or at least deserving a head coaching opportunity. For 2022, he’ll be coaching the Pittsburgh Steelers on the defensive side of the football, helping DC Teryl Austin and Mike Tomlin hopefully return that unit to prominence. The way Jack sees it, having Flores in a supporting role in like having an ace up your sleeve.
“He’s showing us what the offense is trying to do, and him being a head coach, he’s going to show you literally a 360 view of what they’re trying to do and what we’re trying to do and how we can beat what they are trying to do. It’s like playing Battlefield almost, so it’s really cool.”
