Former Miami Dolphins Head Coach Brian Flores filed a lawsuit against three NFL teams and the league itself. While there are some interesting allegations in the suit, Flores drowns them in the ridiculous racial narratives that sports media have been pushing on the NFL for years.
The most interesting parts of the suit come from Flores’s time with the Dolphins. Flores alleges that owner Stephen Ross bribed him to lose games during the 2019 season, offering him $100,000 per loss. Flores also claims that Ross pressured him to recruit a quarterback who was on an NFL roster, which could violate the NFL’s tampering rules.
Other than that, Flores’s lawsuit contains little substance.
The suit pontificated about racism and was ceremoniously filed on the first day of Black History Month. It opens citing Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and Frederick Douglass, among others. It even goes on at length about mediocre former quarterback Colin Kaepernick, in case you are wondering how seriously Flores should be treated. He offers nothing that proves racism, even as he goes on a media tour accusing all NFL teams of being run by racists who need their “hearts and minds” changed.
Former Dolphins head coach Brian Flores joined @GetUpESPN to discuss his decision to sue the NFL and three teams, alleging racism in hiring practices.
“We need change. … We need to change the hearts and minds of people making those decisions.” pic.twitter.com/HnlTHtZ2t5
— ESPN (@espn) February 2, 2022
Flores’s allegations about why he was fired specifically cite his refusal to follow Ross’s orders — and again, that’s interesting. But he then decries as “an all-too-familiar ‘angry black man’ stigma” the Dolphins’ explanation, that he was hard to work with. The thing is, white coaches get that same treatment all the time from teams across multiple leagues. That includes even former NFL coach Jim Harbaugh, who was far more successful than Flores. He got forced out by the San Francisco 49ers due to a front-office power struggle, with the explanation that he was “difficult to work with,” just like Flores.
Flores alleges that Denver Broncos management showed up to his coaching interview in 2019 late and hungover. He alleges that they didn’t treat his interview seriously and were only using him as their token black candidate. This, of course, is the natural result of the archaic and ineffective “Rooney Rule” that forces teams to interview a minority candidate, even if they already know which coach they have in mind for the job.
The New York Giants also ran afoul of the Rooney Rule, according to Flores. He claims they made their decision to hire Brian Daboll before Flores’s scheduled interview. He then goes on to cite other examples of “racism,” including the Arizona Cardinals firing Steve Wilks after just one season and replacing him with Kliff Kingsbury.
Of course, white coaches have also been fired after just one season on the job (such as Mike Mularkey with the 2012 Jaguars and Rob Chudzinski with the 2013 Browns). Flores also mentions, for some reason, that the Cardinals also replaced rookie quarterback Josh Rosen (who is white) at the same time they fired Wilks, bringing in Kyler Murray (who is black) to replace him. Going from a black head coach and white quarterback to a white head coach and black quarterback, apparently, is proof of racism in Flores’s eyes.
Flores knows what he’s doing. His lawsuit may be 90% equine excrement, but it will make him a media darling who can get any big sports deal he wants. The social justice grievance machine that is ESPN will be eager to hire him if no NFL team will.
Flores’s grand claims of racism are empty, but that doesn’t matter. Flores has apparently decided that he would rather be a Kaepernick than an NFL head coach. Given how lucrative that decision has proven for Kaepernick in spite of his relative lack of talent, who can blame him?
