Brian Flores, the former Dolphins head coach and current Steelers senior defensive assistant, responded to the NFL’s investigation into allegations of tampering and tanking at the Miami club in a statement Tuesday.
The six-month probe was launched in February after Flores filed a lawsuit against the league, three of its teams—the Giants, Broncos and Dolphins—and 29 “John Doe” teams for racist practices in hiring. He also said that Miami owner Stephen Ross offered him a $100,000 bonus for each game lost in 2019 to better position the club in the ’20 draft and that Ross tried to get Flores to recruit “a prominent quarterback,” later identified as Tom Brady, who was under contract to another team during a meeting on the owner’s yacht.
The league found the Dolphins tampered with Brady in 2019 through ’20 and in the ’21 season, as well as former Saints coach Sean Payton in ’22. However, the league found “the Dolphins did not intentionally lose games during the 2019 season” and no one at the club “including Mr. Ross [instructed] Coach Flores to do so.”
