In late January, as the Miami Dolphin slow-cooked their coaching hire, a team source was asked about the strangely sluggish pace.
“Just wait, this will be big,’’ the source said.
The Dolphins hoped to land Super Bowl winners Tom Brady as quarterback and Sean Payton as coach, the South Florida Sun Sentinel confirmed. Their yearlong plans were undone in part by former coach Brian Flores’ discrimination lawsuit against the NFL that involves Dolphins owner Steve Ross.
All of which puts the Dolphins’ offseason spending splurge and perhaps their future in a different context. The hope was to marry Super Bowl winners like Payton and Brady with big-name free agents like receiver Tyreek Hill and tackle Terron Armstead and — voila! — become instant contenders.
Instant box-office hits, too. Brady? Payton? Their young players and free-agent buys? As one source said: “You’d have needed to add security at the ticket window.”
Instead, the Dolphins hired a first-time coach Mike McDaniel and endorsed Tua Tagovailoa as quarterback. But their what-might-have-been file over the past two decades of missed players and mistimed decisions adds perhaps its most seductive chapter of all.
Their chase of Brady and Payton, as first reported by Pro Football Talk and The Boston Globe, was real and would have been spectacular. All the timelines confirm the source and national reports. Payton resigned as New Orleans Saints coach on Jan. 25 but said he planned to coach again.
Brady stepped away from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Feb. 1, but didn’t say he was retired or file retirement paperwork with the NFL. The Dolphins planned to introduce Brady in team management before the Feb. 13 Super Bowl, Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio reported.
He’d initially be given an executive/ownership role similar to Derek Jeter had with the Marlins, Ben Volin of The Boston Globe reported, before deciding to play quarterback.
The role involved the specter of ownership, the Sun Sentinel confirmed, and grew out of Ross and owner-in-waiting Bruce Beal’s relationship with Brady. It also involved two deteriorating relationships: Ross with Flores, and Brady with Tampa Bay coach Bruce Arians.
Brady, as in New England, showed up each Tuesday morning with a game plan for the following Sunday, a source said. He expected coaches to do the same. Arians, busy with other work, wasn’t ready at that early point in a work week to complete a full game plan. It became representative of small-ish but significant problems between them.
Meanwhile, the Dolphins’ recruitment of Brady was supposed to be a three-pronged effort: Ross, who is the biggest donor to the University of Michigan, Brady’s alma mater; Beal, who is social friends with Brady and his wife, Gisele Bundchen; and Flores, who was a New England Patriots defensive assistant for 15 years when Brady was there.
The big picture could have included former Vic Fangio, considered to be one of the league’s top defensive coordinators, and Mike Westhoff, who was a legendary special teams coach with the Dolphins and New York Jets before working for Payton in New Orleans.
Ross and Beal did their part. Flores, though, wanted to trade for Houston quarterback Deshaun Watson, who remains involved in a civil suit for sexual misconduct allegations and has since been traded to Cleveland.
As Flores wrote in his lawsuit, Ross “began to pressure,” Flores to recruit “a prominent quarterback in violation of league tampering rules.”
The quarterback, who sources identified as Brady, arrived at a marina where Ross invited Flores to lunch Super Bowl Week in 2020 in Miami. It was the same week Brady attended a Beal party on Star Island. Ross and Dolphins legend Dan Marino also attended the party.
Flores said that marina incident and, more significantly, his refusal to lose games in 2019 were reasons that led to his ouster on Jan. 10, the first day after the season.
On Feb. 1, the same day Brady retired, Flores announced his lawsuit against the NFL. The Dolphins’ coaching interviews had noticeably stopped in days leading to that. They announced they would have second interviews the following week with two coaches no other teams were chasing in McDaniel and Dallas offensive coordinator Kellen Moore.
“A little bit of a hiatus,’’ NFL Network’s Ian Rappaport said of the Dolphins’ interviews when they interviewed Moore again on Feb. 4.
The reason for the delay is clear: The plan was for Payton to provide a winning partnership with Brady. Payton was still under contract with New Orleans. Dolphins general manager Chris Grier said New Orleans was asked for permission to talk to Payton but was denied.
Payton’s coming was contingent on Brady.
“Flores’ lawsuit stopped it all,’’ a source said.
Why? Well, one allegation is Ross offered $100,000 to Flores to lose games. If that game-fixing charge is proven true, Ross could be forced to sell the team by the league. That would put all ownership in question — including Brady’s stake.
All of which leaves us where? Well, if that marina visit involved tampering charges, as Flores suggested in his lawsuit, this big plan to get Brady and Payton raises more issues. The question is how much Payton and Brady knew about being pursued. It’s hard to imagine these plans went anywhere without Brady’s approval.
The Dolphins hired McDaniel on Feb. 7, endorsed Tua and … well, there’s a new angle of pressure on each to perform with the big pieces once considered for Brady and Payton.
If the Dolphins don’t win this year, will Ross turn attention again to Payton and Brady? Brady turns 45 in August. He’s building a lavish home on Indian Creek in Miami Beach. His contract hasn’t been re-done yet in Tampa.
Until it is — if it is — the question will be out there around the Dolphins like some political ticket: Brady and Payton in 2023?
