The Cowboys have won two straight, which is enough to get Jerry Jones talking about potentially handing out a contract extension for embattled head coach Mike McCarthy. Still, the odds are extremely high that the team is looking for a new coach in about a month’s time.

There are plenty of candidates that could be in the running, but just as there was a strong case to be made for the Cowboys betting on Dan Campbell the last time the Cowboys were hiring, there is a very compelling case to be made for hiring Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores.

Defensive scheme vs the NFC

The standard in Dallas is winning a Super Bowl, but you can’t do that without getting out of the NFC first. The Eagles, 49ers, and Lions currently stand out as the Cowboys’ top boogeymen when thinking about reaching the Super Bowl, and all three pose unique challenges offensively.

Flores has quietly put up a great track record against them, most notably against 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan. Flores’ career has seen really great results against a wide variety of coaches who use the Shanahan style offense, which is currently run by 10 of the 16 teams in the conference.

Flores has been particularly great against Shanahan directly. As the Dolphins head coach, he beat San Francisco 43-17 in 2020, which saw the 49ers’ second-worst EPA/play of any game that year. Last season, as the Vikings defensive coordinator, Flores’ defense held the 49ers to their third-worst EPA/play of the year en route to a 22-17 victory. He did it again this year, with the Vikings winning 23-17 and (as of right now) holding them to their third-worst EPA/play of the year.

Flores’ scheme is unlike any other in the league right now, which is what’s helped him have so much success. The longtime Patriots coach holds Bill Belichick as the philosophical foundation of his scheme, one that relies heavily on blitzing and tight man coverage. But Flores has tweaked his scheme with the Vikings, a result of brainstorming sessions with Pitt Panthers head coach Pat Narduzzi during Flores’ season with the Steelers.

Flores has incorporated several of Narduzzi’s time-tested concepts into his own scheme, particularly the use of hot blitzes from six-man fronts and a newfound reliance on quarters coverage, which has taken the league by storm as of late. That’s helped his scheme become an animal all of its own, and confuse just about every quarterback and coordinator along the way.

The Cowboys could certainly use some of that on defense, especially if they have any hope of being able to contend with the high-powered offenses that stand in their way to a Super Bowl appearance. More than anything, arming a coach like Flores with a weapon like Micah Parsons may legitimately break the NFL.

Outperforming expectations

When Flores was first hired by the Dolphins in 2019, it was almost immediately reported that the team intended to tank that season in order to draft Tua Tagovailoa. Flores would later claim as much in his ongoing lawsuit against the NFL, and the moves Miami made – swapping Ryan Tannehill for Ryan Fitzpatrick, trading left tackle Laremy Tunsil, and setting an NFL record for most player transactions during the season – certainly backed up this theory.

As such, the Dolphins started the year with extremely low expectations. Most betting lines had them winning between two and three games all year. Despite that, the team won five games, including their final two games of the year. Not just that, but Miami was 9-7 against the spread, a general indicator that they were punching well above their weight.

The next season saw Flores’ Dolphins blossom into a genuine playoff contender, though they ultimately missed the postseason despite going 10-6. Even then, the Dolphins were 11-5 against the spread. A year later, they were 9-7-1 against the spread and finished the year with a 9-8 record despite Tagovailoa missing several games with an injury.

Record against the spread isn’t perfect, but it does offer a fairly solid gauge of how often teams play better or worse than the betting markets expect. The fact that Flores was able to go 29-20-1 against the spread reflects a general ability to overperform expectations. His Dolphins teams also overperformed their season-long win total projections each year by at least a game.

That ability to get the best out of his players – players like Xavien Howard, DeVante Parker, Mike Gesicki, Emmanuel Ogbah, Myles Gaskin, Jevon Holland, and Jakeem Grant all had career years under Flores and have struggled to replicate that success since – is a key ingredient necessary in the next head coach of the Cowboys, given the cautious manner in which this front office operates.

Offensive scheme connections

The biggest question around Flores becoming a head coach will center around his offensive coordinator hire. He had a different coordinator each season in Miami, and the offense never really rounded into form under his time there.

That said, Flores has spent the past two seasons in Minnesota running the defense, working alongside head coach Kevin O’Connell, who calls offensive plays. O’Connell hails from the Sean McVay tree, working under him in Los Angeles before coming to Minnesota. As Flores’ name gains traction for various head coaching openings, so too is the belief that Flores has a list of coordinator candidates with ties to either O’Connell or McVay.

A few names that could potentially be on that list include current Vikings quarterback coach and Dallas native Josh McCown, current Bears interim offensive coordinator and interim head coach Thomas Brown, Rams pass game specialist Nate Scheelhaase, and Rams pass game coordinator Nick Caley. In particular, Caley worked with Flores in New England before and has fielded several offers in the past for coordinator roles, but turned them down.

Flores may not exclusively look to hire from the McVay tree but his connections there are strong. The relationship he’s built with O’Connell over the last two years have opened Flores up to a vast pool of candidates who may not have been as willing to come work under Flores prior to his time with the Vikings. And given how the McVay/Shanahan offense has become the most widely used scheme in the league, landing someone like Flores who could install a similar offense would be extremely valuable.

Experience in personnel decision-making

Former Cowboys receiver and current analyst with DLLS Sports, Jesse Holley, perfectly summed up what the next head coach needs:

McCarthy has never been particularly vocal about personnel decisions, dating back to his time in Green Bay, and Jason Garrett was similarly deferential to the front office. That’s not entirely a bad thing, as Will McClay has had an impressive track record, but the Cowboys need a head coach who will be intimately involved in the personnel decision-making and is willing to stand up to ownership when necessary.

Flores fits that bill to a tee. He was a pro scout for the Patriots before he got into coaching, and Flores was also heavily involved in the Dolphins’ roster management processes as head coach. General manager Chris Grier still had autonomy at the end of the day, but Flores was known to make his opinions heard, and often got his way.

It helps that Flores was a crucial part of what proved to be a very good run for the Dolphins’ front office. Last year’s team, which went 11-6, featured 25 of their 35 top contributors by snap percentage being acquired while Flores was the head coach.

Flores has not only the credentials but the willpower to be an active head coach when it comes to building out a roster. McClay would likely still be the one most directly responsible for managing the draft, but Flores’ presence would add an extra element to the conversation and a much-needed outside perspective as it relates to strategies.