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NEW YORK — Brian Flores has filed a class-action lawsuit against the NFL and three teams — the Dolphins, the Broncos and the Giants — alleging discrimination regarding his interview processes with Denver and New York and his firing last month by Miami.
In the 58-page lawsuit, Flores claims Dolphins owner Stephen Ross attempted to incentivize him to “tank” or purposely lose games shortly after he was hired in 2019, with Ross allegedly offering Flores $100,000 for every game the team lost that season.
Flores says that as the team won games late in the season, Dolphins general manager Chris Grier told him Ross was “mad” that Flores’ on-field success was “compromising [the team’s] draft position.”
Additionally, Flores claims Ross pressured him into recruiting a “prominent quarterback” at the end of the 2019 season, which Flores refused so as not to violate the NFL’s rules on tampering. Ross then allegedly invited Flores onto a yacht for lunch in the winter of 2020, where he informed Flores that the “prominent quarterback” was “conveniently” arriving at the marina for an impromptu meeting.
Flores again refused the meeting and left the yacht. Afterward, Flores claims he was “treated with disdain and held out as someone who was noncompliant and difficult to work with.”
He was eventually fired on Jan. 10, 2022, despite recording the franchise’s first back-to-back winning seasons since 2003 (10-6 in 2021; 9-8 in 2021).
Flores also alleged the Giants interviewed him last month for their head-coaching vacancy for no other reason than compliance with the NFL’s Rooney Rule, which requires teams to interview minority candidates for their open positions. Read more.
