On the same day as Tom Brady’s official retirement, it was another former New England Patriot who stopped the league in its tracks. Brian Flores, former defensive coordinator for the Patriots and now former head coach of the Miami Dolphins, had enough.
Enough with the sham interviews for Black candidates after NFL owners had already privately anointed white coaches. Enough with the impossible-to-reach targets for Black head coaches on the rare occasion they are hired. Enough with a Rooney Rule that 20 years since its birth and despite its intentions to give more opportunities to minority candidates has left us with exactly one Black NFL head coach in the NFL in 2022.
Flores was fired in January after leading the Dolphins to an 8-1 record to close out the season and had compiled back-to-back winning campaigns in Miami, the first coach to do so since 2003. He should have been scooped up by another team five seconds after his ousting. But instead he sat and watched as candidates with no head coaching experience filled the vacancies at the Denver Broncos and New York Giants.
Understandably, he couldn’t take it anymore. The 40-year-old filed an explosive class action complaint against the NFL and each of the league’s 32 franchises in federal court on Tuesday, alleging racial discrimination in their hiring practices of head coaches, coordinators, and general managers.
Flores made a litany of disturbing allegations in the lawsuit, starting with the claim that Dolphins owner Stephen Ross offered him $100,000 for every loss in 2019 so the team could earn a higher draft pick. Miami instead finished with five wins, exceeding expectations. As the complaint details, there was no good option for Flores as a Black head coach. Had the Dolphins actually tanked, they would have been the league’s laughingstock and Flores would have been the easy sacrifice. Ignoring the request, which he did, made Ross “mad” and Flores was seen as “an angry Black man” who refused to comply with team policy, ushering in the end of his time in Miami.
Here are the texts: pic.twitter.com/WjdLNRxfO1
— Alex Weprin (@alexweprin) February 1, 2022
Flores also shared a maddening text string from Bill Belichick congratulating him on the New York Giants head coaching job, which Belichick claimed was Flores’s. It turns out Belichick thought he was texting ex-Bills defensive coordinator Brian Daboll, who would be named the new Giants coach three days later. In the meantime, Flores went on another extensive interview with the Giants, who have not had a Black head coach in their nearly 100-year history, knowing the job was not his.
Flores also alleges the Broncos used him to fulfill the Rooney Rule during their hiring cycle in 2019. According to Flores, then-general manager John Elway and team president Joe Ellis arrived at the interview an hour late and hungover. (The Giants, Dolphins and Broncos deny all the allegations leveled against them in the lawsuit and say they are committed to racial equality).
This series of demoralizing events led Flores to do the unthinkable and set the NFL afire.
“God has gifted me with a special talent to coach the game of football, but the need for change is bigger than my personal goals. In making the decision to file the class action complaint today, I understand that I may be risking coaching the game that I love and that has done so much for my family and me. My sincere hope is that by standing up against systemic racism in the NFL, others will join me to ensure that positive change is made for generations to come,” he said in a statement.
Two hours after the Flores complaint dropped, the NFL released a statement of its own calling Flores’s claims, “without merit.” The league took months to investigate Deflategate. It took two hours to reach a decision on Flores’s accusations.
Flores’ compelling 58-page lawsuit, which details the history of racism in the league, likens the NFL to a “plantation.” As the document says: “The owners watch the games from atop NFL stadiums in their luxury boxes, while their majority-Black workforce put their bodies on the line every Sunday, taking vicious hits and suffering debilitating injuries to their bodies and their brains while the NFL and its owners reap billions of dollars.”
Then come the slew of examples, each one more devastating than the last. The NFL building its product on the backs of Black players only to ban them in 1934 once the league was financially viable. Colin Kaepernick’s ousting. The revelation that the league was trying to minimize payouts to former Black players involved in the $1bn concussion settlement through race-norming, a racist practice that claims Black people begin with a lower cognitive function than their white counterpoints.
It’s hard to argue with the complaint’s depiction of the league as a quasi-plantation – of rich white men making money off the bodies of young Black men. Yet the cycle continues. Flores, a man of conviction, knows he is following in the footsteps of Kaepernick and risking his career by making public what has been so obvious.
This is a pivotal moment for the league. Flores is not the only one with stories. Players across the league publicly expressed their support for Flores, along with their lack of surprise. The current President of the Unites States isn’t going to use Flores as a political pawn to attract racists. With Flores teeming with support, the spotlight turns to the owners.
And it’s always been the owners. It’s not NFL commissioner Roger Goodell who, to his credit, has been vocal on the league’s lack of progress when it comes to minority candidates. It’s the collection of millionaire and billionaire team owners, who pay Goodell and decide who to hire. White men – and in all but two cases the owners are white – who are so rich that they know public opinion doesn’t affect them one way or another. After all, they’ve seen men of their class, race and wealth degrade the environment, damage the fabric of society, exploit college athletes and devalue democracy and still get away with it. They may not be representative of the NFL or the United States, but they control them.
In a just world, Flores’s bravery would inspire change, like actual change, not just words painted in an end zone for show. If the Ross allegations are true, he would be ousted. The hiring and firing process would come with more accountability, as the complaint recommends. And while the first four head coaching hires this cycle have been white men, perhaps some of the remaining five slots will be filled by the droves of qualified Black candidates. But sadly, we shouldn’t hold our breath because the system has proven time and time again that it’s as unjust as they come.
