Brian Flores sued the NFL on Tuesday and accused teams of repeatedly passing him over for jobs, arguing the league is “rife with racism” and “lives in a time of the past.”
Flores claimed the “Rooney Rule” often leads teams to schedule bad-faith “sham” interviews instead of genuinely attempting to hire a diverse staff, which is what he called out with the Denver Broncos. He also accused the New York Giants of subjecting him to a fake interview for a vacant head coach position last week, despite already selecting former Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll for the job, which Flores called a “discriminatory façade designed to show false compliance with the Rooney Rule.”
On top of talking about that was the huge allegation that Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross offered him $100,000 to lose games.
Flores opened up about the situation with Ross on Wednesday during an appearance on ESPN’s “Get Up.”
“That was a conversation about not doing as much as we needed to do to win football games,” Flores said. “‘Take a flight, go on vacation, I’ll give you $100,000 per loss.’ Like, those are exact words. Look, I deal in truth. I’ve said that to the players as well. I’m gonna give you good news, bad news, but it’s gonna be the truth.
It’s gonna be honest. This game’s done a lot for me — a lot for me personally, my family. My parents are immigrants. I’m first-generation. I grew up in a tough neighborhood here in Brooklyn, Brownsville, where there’s crime and poverty and violence. It was hard to make it out of there and the game of football is a big reason why, along with a lot of the great people and mentors I’ve had in my life, I’ve had the success that I’ve had. So, to disrespect the game that way was something that — trust was lost, certainty some strained relationships and ultimately I think that was to my demise in Miami.”
Flores stood by his claim and explained why he didn’t take the Dolphins owner up on his offer.
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“That’s just not in my DNA,” Flores said. “That was never gonna happen. Look, I’m always going to try to win. That’s who I am. I owe that to the players in the locker room, but also the support staff that’s in the building who work extremely hard. If you’ve been in an NFL building, everyone in that building’s job is important and everyone works hard to try to get on the same page and move in the same direction. I felt like we were building that type of culture. So, I would never do that to them. At the end of the day, I think it was the reason why I’m no longer there.”
Flores was expected to be a prominent figure in the head coaching interview cycle after he was fired by the Dolphins, but now it remains up in the air if any team will touch him after this lawsuit.
