One year from now, when NFL teams fire their yearly batch of coaches and begin scrambling to fill their vacancies with predetermined candidates of their choice, the fallout of the Brian Flores lawsuit will be felt.
That’s regardless of what happens in a courtroom, regardless of whether the NFL actually decides to investigate serious allegations of tanking (haha!). The text messages Flores included in his lawsuit, from Bill Belichick allegedly congratulating a different candidate on likely getting a job Flores was still yet to interview for, and Flores’s face on television Wednesday morning, describing what it felt like to walk into what he felt was not a legitimate interview, will resonate with coaches of color around the NFL who know this feeling all too well.
For the league and its teams, the consequences will be when minority coaches refuse to be the candidate who interviews with a club simply to check off a box. At the moment, teams hiring for general manager, head coach or coordinator jobs must interview two candidates of color before making a final decision. Many teams have made a decision at the beginning of the process and try to reverse-engineer the requirements from there. In the future, coaches of color will likely be far more judicious about the process. That’s what we’re hearing now. Sadly, they will go beyond due diligence in order to avoid a fate similar to Flores’s. Owners will have to earn back a level of trust they have squandered.
