Let me start by saying that I believe that there is merit to the cause of addressing the coaching inequality in the NFL that the lawsuit of Brian Flores brings to light. If the New York Football Giants setup a sham interview with Flores to fulfill some antiquated Rooney Rule diversity quota while knowing they were going to hire Brian Daboll, then that is something that should be fully investigated and challenged. It is hard to explain that almost 20 years after the ratification of the Rooney Rule there is only one African American coach in a league that is 70% African American. The only rational thought is that there is clearly a systematic issue when it comes to hiring minorities in the NFL. However, this charge has nothing to do with the Dolphins.
The Dolphins have one of the most diverse front offices in the NFL. Until recently, they were the only team in the NFL with a black head coach and a black general manager. The Dolphins assistant GM, Marvin Allen, is also black. This is a fact that was previously celebrated around the league. It’s also a reason that I wanted this core group to succeed. I wanted Grier and Flores to be a match made in heaven and continue being an example to the rest of the league. Now Mike McDaniel, a biracial half black man, stands as the frontrunner to assume the head coaching position vacated by Flores.
From the outside looking in, the Dolphins have no problem hiring minority coaches. Yet the Dolphins are somehow being lumped in with the Giants due to the lawsuit. Accusations of racial discrimination against the Dolphins is simply unfair. Flores was not hired because of his race nor was he fired due to his race. I also believe that while it is easily provable that the Giants did not schedule an interview in good faith with Flores, it will be very difficult for Flores to prove that he wasn’t hired due to racial discrimination. While his will be a tough case for his lawyers to prove, I hope that they can get to the bottom of this and stimulate some form of widespread systemic reformation. The irony of the Flores accusation is the lawyers he made the TV tour with on Wednesday are not black. Are there not any decent labor rights lawyers of African American descent in New York?
During the height of the athlete protest scandal sparked by Colin Kaepernick, the Dolphins were one of the few organizations that decided to engage with their players like Kenny Stills to try and give them a reason to stand for the anthem rather than penalizing them for protesting during it. Initially, Ross and the rest of his ownership group were not on the side of hearing the players out, but despite his political beliefs, Ross setup up a fund along with Stills to engage with local police and the neighborhood in order to try and make progress in the fight against police brutality. That is a credit to Stephen Ross and the rest of the ownership group who politically were not in agreement with the players.
Stephen Ross has not been a perfect owner. The Dolphins have not done a ton of winning during his tenure as chairman. However, Ross is not afraid to spend his money to try to improve the team. He just wants to win a championship or two before his time is up. Stephen Ross has spent half a billion of his own money renovating the stadium and has brought a lot of major events to Miami Gardens that otherwise would not have come to South Florida. I have had the pleasure of watching Manchester City, Manchester United, Bayern Munich, and El Clasico (Los Blancos of Real Madrid versus Barcelona) play just a few miles away from where I grew up. The stadium now hosts a major tennis tournament and will be the site of a major Formula 1 race. Additionally, the National Championship game, College Football Playoff semifinals, and Superbowls have all been hosted at Hard Rock. Ross has directly stimulated the regentrification of Carol City. The last Dolphins owner to do what Ross has done was Joe Robbie and he became a Miami legend for his efforts. Stephen Ross has similarly not been cheap with his team and has authorized major spending for free agents to try to win. He has gone after some of the best minds in football to try to win, it just hasn’t panned out so far.
What we have learned about Ross recently is that he might have been a little bit more meddlesome and manipulative than we originally thought. However, his goal is simply to win games. I can’t fault him for that. Should he have had Tom Brady on his yacht or meeting at the marina as Flores alleges? Probably not. But if you have a shot at getting the G.O.A.T. on your team- you do what it takes to get him. It would have been malpractice for him not to go all out for TB12 after the front row seat we had watching his dominance of the AFC East for the past two decades. Brian Flores shutting that down and now snitching on those attempts after the fact is what I find to be unforgivable.
The Dolphins have been in the mediocre middle for far too long. There were lots of 6-10s, 7-9s, and 8-8 records with close heartbreaking losses and narrow misses of the playoffs. In professional sports you either want to be really good or really bad to put you in the best position to acquire the best young talent coming out in the next draft. If you’re constantly in the middle pack, then you’re not good enough to be a playoff team, but will always be picking in the middle of every round after the best of the best have already been drafted by other teams picking ahead of you. It wasn’t working. So, for the first time in the history of the franchise, the Dolphins decided to tank in 2019. It was the worst kept secret in the NFL. Dolphins insiders reported that Gase was let go because he didn’t want to tank and be a part of a rebuild and they took a chance on a Linebacker coach from New England who had never been a coordinator or head coach before. Not only did they hire a black Hispanic coach of Central American descent, they hired him when he didn’t even have the curriculum vitae bullet points to qualify for job. The Dolphins were not shy during the interview phase with Flores on the fact that they were doing a teardown and rebuild. They were clearly in tank mode and Flores must have told them that he was on board because he got the job.
If you’re of the belief that the Dolphins are the only team to have tanked to try to rebuild, then you’re naive and probably were just born yesterday. This concept is not a new strategy. In 2019, when the Dolphins were supposedly “tanking for Tua”, the Bengals were doing the exact same thing. It was clear in that year that Joe Burrow would be the 1st overall pick and that whoever got him would probably be getting themselves a gem. I wanted the Dolphins to lose every game that year except for the both Jets games and the last game at home against the Patriots that ended Brady’s tenure in New England. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why we were playing Fitzmagic and won 5 meaningless games when we had just traded for Josh Rosen and were supposed to be tanking.
I was ready for us as Dolphins to finally get our next Marino and Joe Burrow was clearly going to be that kind of prospect. The Bengals tanked correctly, and clinched Joe Burrow in an overtime loss to the Dolphins where they were unstoppable in the 4th quarter. The Bengals scored 23 points 4th quarter points to tie up the game and force overtime, but all of a sudden in the extra time period, guys were running backwards on 3rd downs and the Bengal offense that was unstoppable in the 4th quarter became inept once again. The Dolphins are so dysfunctional, they couldn’t even tank correctly. Now the Bengals are in the Superbowl and getting celebrated for their quick turn around and rebuild while the Dolphins are still the laughing stock of the league and have produced more controversies than playoff appearances in the past 10 years.
Brian Flores spent most of 18-year career coaching in the NFL as a Dolphin hating Patriot. If you believe for one second that he got hired here and suddenly cared more about the Dolphins winning than myself, you, Dolphin fans around the world, and Stephen Ross who has owned the team since 2008, then you are kidding yourself. He sabotaged a long term plan to finally fix this team by winning 5 meaningless games in 2019 that could have gotten him Joe Burrow. Flores had a chance at helping recruit a “prominent NFL QB” rumored to be Tom Brady, to the Dolphins- and he shut it down. How do you cost yourself a chance at Joe Burrow and Tom Brady and then complain when you end up getting stuck with Tua Tagovailoa? Flores has no one to blame for himself for his firing. If he had Joe Burrow as his quarterback, I guarantee you that today he would still be happily employed in South Florida. The Dolphins had a plan that Flores agreed to when he got hired and then he went rogue and played Ryan Fitzpatrick instead of playing Josh Rosen like he was supposed to. No one would have batted an eye if the Dolphins were losing games with Josh Rosen considering they had just traded a 2nd and a 5th round pick to get him and he was a 2nd year player that no one knew how good or how bad he was.
The fact that Flores is now ratting and running to the principal to tattle tale on the organization that a few weeks ago he claimed to care deeply about is the preeminent example showing that he is a selfish individual who primarily cared about himself and could care less about the organization or the fans. He is willing to drag the Dolphins into a lawsuit that has nothing to do with them because of sour grapes and an axe to grind.
What does Ross asking him to tank have to do with the Giants hiring a white dude over him? What does him not tanking in 2019 have to do with the fact that he was brought in for a sham interview when New York had already made their mind up to hire the offensive coordinator from Buffalo? One has absolutely nothing to do with the other. Flores just wanted to sing like Sammy the Bull in an effort to try to take down John Gotti because he never had a deep love for the Gambino family to begin. Dishing alleged dirt on the Dolphins asking him to tank or to tamper with a prominent QB in the league has nothing to do with his lawsuit. He simply wants to take down Ross and in doing so the Dolphins organization because us fans will be the ones having to suffer from the effects of lost draft picks or other punitive measures that the league could take. So I wish Flores the best with his lawsuit against the Giants and the NFL for minority representation in coaching, but as a lifelong invested Dolfan who now wishes that the Dolphins never took a chance on him- F**K THAT GUY FOREVER! And that’s from the heart.
