By now, everyone knows that there weren’t the best relationships between former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores and the rest of the front office and ownership. However, the disfunction apparently started much earlier than originally believed when the team announced that he had been fired after the 2021 regular season had come to a close.
In a lawsuit that Flores filed against multiple NFL teams on Tuesday, the coach has alleged that Dolphins owner Stephen Ross wanted the team to tank during Flores’ first season in 2019. Flores alleges that Ross offered him $100,000 for each game lost that year and was upset by Miami’s winning.
“The Dolphins owner, Stephen Ross, was unhappy with this performance not because it was under-performing. To the contrary, Mr. Ross wanted the Mr. Flores to ‘tank’ the season to put the team in position to secure the first pick in the draft. Indeed, during the 2019 season, Mr. Ross told Mr. Flores that he would pay him $100,000 for each game lost that year. Then, when the Dolphins started winning games, due in no small part to Mr. Flores’ coaching, Mr. Flores was told by the team’s General Manager, Chris Grier, that ‘Steve’ was ‘mad’ that Mr. Flores’ success in winning games that year was ‘compromising [the team’s] draft position.'”
Flores refused to lose games voluntarily in his first season, as his team won five of its final nine contests. The Dolphins’ 5-11 record kept them out of contention for the top draft pick that Ross so desperately wanted.
The coach alleges that following that first season, Ross “began to pressure Mr. Flores to recruit a prominent quarterback in violation of League tampering rules.”
According to Flores, he refused to comply and that’s when his relationship with Ross soured. After he began refusing to follow the demands of ownership, Flores alleges he was “treated with disdain and held out as someone who was noncompliant and difficult to work with.”
