How Josh Metellus became the key to Brian Flores' innovative Vikings defense

He wears the perfect number: 44.

What type of football player typically wears 44? It feels too high for a safety but too low for a defensive lineman. Linebackers don’t always wear 44. Neither do cornerbacks. If you were to select one position on the football field for the number, it’d probably be a fullback. One of those helmet-smashing, spirit-lifting, lines-up-everywhere types of players. At his core, that’s who Joshua Metellus is for the Minnesota Vikings.

“Shoot, man,” cornerback Byron Murphy Jr. said recently. “Josh can seriously play every position we have.”

That’s not hyperbole. This season, Metellus has played about 40 percent of his snaps at linebacker, 30 percent at slot corner and 16 percent at safety. The rest of the time, he has lined up on the defensive line or out wide against elite receivers.

Simply calling Metellus versatile does not do him justice. Next Gen Stats has been around since 2018, and Metellus’ undertaking transcends any role any defender has played since then.

He’s one of the NFL’s best pass rushers and run stoppers from the slot. He runs stunts at the line of scrimmage. He plays man coverage against tight ends. He deflects passes, jars the ball loose from ball carriers, blitzes off the edge and drops into underneath zones.

This is not a player multitasking just to say he can do it. And defensive coordinator Brian Flores is not asking Metellus to play these different roles simply to say he has a defender who can do it. It is a capable player working with an attentive coach who grasps his potential and is creative enough to construct a role that makes use of that player’s full skill set. Metellus’ football story is as much about the people around him as anything else, an example of what can happen when the right people recognize your biggest attributes.

There’s not a position @NoExcuses_23 can’t play. pic.twitter.com/b76Lyh9u23

— Minnesota Vikings (@Vikings) November 12, 2024

Every coach says he wants to put his players in the best positions to be successful. It’s a lovely thought, but what does that entail?

Ask Flores’ opinion, and he’ll say it’s a lot of trial and error. Put a player in a spot or have him move around a certain part of the field. Then watch him. Don’t worry about whether or not he can do it. Worry about whether or not he can do it well.

“I try to push the limits with players and see how much they can handle,” Flores said. “Normally, we have to pull back a little bit.”

Sometimes a player’s size and speed prohibit him from excelling at the task. Other times, the player cannot conceptualize multiple responsibilities at once. Metellus, who was drafted out of Michigan in 2020 and primarily played special teams during his first three seasons in Minnesota, stands 5-foot-11 and weighs 207 pounds. Light enough to cover, but strong enough to play in the box. He also understood Flores’ concepts immediately.

Last spring, early in Flores’ time with the Vikings, the coach asked himself to identify the best 11 defensive players. Metellus was one of them. Flores believed the onus fell on him to figure out how to get those 11 players on the field and decipher who would play where. In one personnel grouping, Flores assigned Metellus to slot corner. In another, Flores positioned Metellus at linebacker. Metellus was shocked when he entered Flores’ office and was told of the coach’s vision for him — not because he didn’t think he could do it, but because he’d found another coach willing to see what he saw in himself.

We got all the contacts in our phones 📱 pic.twitter.com/QCwQdnWG5I

— Minnesota Vikings (@Vikings) November 12, 2024

Almost a decade earlier, Devin Bush Sr., an NFL safety for the Falcons, Rams and Browns from 1995 to 2002, arrived at a turf field near Miami to watch a seven-on-seven game. Bush was a coach at Flanagan High School in Pembroke Pines, Fla., a suburb north of Miami. That day, with the heat climbing to an uncomfortable level, he could not take his eyes off one of the running backs.

It turned out to be Metellus, whom Bush met afterward, and who would ultimately play for him at Flanagan. Bush moved him to safety, but really, Metellus became so much more. He ranged from deep and tackled ball carriers. He lined up across from slot receivers and snatched tipped passes out of the air for interceptions. He did so much of what he was doing now, observing offensive formations, hand-signaling checks at the line of scrimmage, celebrating audibly when the defense excelled.

Somehow, recruiting websites categorized him as a three-star recruit. “Writers were hyping other people up, and not seeing the skill set,” Bush said. Metellus’ top offers came from South Alabama, Florida International and Middle Tennessee State — until a camp one afternoon at the nearby Dolphins facility. Bush was on the sideline when another former NFL safety, Greg Jackson, then the defensive backs coach at Michigan, approached.

“Who is this, Bush?”

“Josh Metellus,” he replied.

“Look at his movement skills,” Jackson said, “how he can stay square when he’s pedaling.”

Bush nodded slowly the way you do when you already know something you’re being told.

“I should offer him,” Jackson said.

“You won’t regret it,” Bush replied.

Metellus played as a freshman at Michigan, then replaced current New England Patriots defender Jabrill Peppers at the Wolverines’ “viper” position, a do-it-all spot requiring a player who could understand, communicate and apply a breadth of ideas with 107,000 people hollering their lungs out in Ann Arbor. Two All-Big Ten selections later, the Vikings drafted Metellus for Mike Zimmer’s innovative defensive system.

Metellus was mostly stuck on special teams for his first couple of seasons, but in 2022, the Vikings hired Ed Donatell as their defensive coordinator. That system prioritized putting players in specific positions with specific tasks: You start here, and you do X based on Y. Donatell included Metellus in a third-down package, and he filled in admirably for safety Harrison Smith when the veteran missed a game due to a concussion.

The next season, Flores’ arrival and open-mindedness altered Metellus’ trajectory. But Flores said his ideas would be worth nothing without Metellus’ retention.

“With Josh, pulling back (on the complexity) was not the problem,” Flores said. “We had to add more.”

.@horribleharry99: Josh, I need an INT@noexcuses_23: I got you

📺: https://t.co/jqOKdIvMuj pic.twitter.com/ds12XSyCiU

— Minnesota Vikings (@Vikings) September 20, 2024

Metellus’ understanding of what the Vikings defense is trying to do has countless benefits beyond the flexibility and interchangeable game planning he allows Flores. Metellus can fill in everywhere in the event of an injury to a starter, limiting the level of drop-off. If a young defender like Dwight McGlothern has questions, he can ask Metellus, who has the acumen to explain the ideas simply.

There is a reason Metellus, still just 26, is the man in the middle of the teamwide pregame huddle each Sunday, revving up his teammates with a speech. They respect his willingness to apply his services wherever they’re needed. They know the years he spent waiting for a role and a time like this, a time Vikings fans are wearing his No. 44 jersey in droves because of the impact he always knew he could make.

“Josh is as valuable a player on the roster as we have,” Flores said.

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(Photo: Luke Hales / Getty Images)