Former Dolphins Coach Brian Flores ‘Disappointed’ by NFL’s Tanking Investigation

The league found ‘the Dolphins did not intentionally lose games during the 2019 season,’ and no one instructed the former head coach to do so.

Brian Flores, the former Dolphins head coach and current Steelers senior defensive assistant, responded to the NFL’s investigation into allegations of tampering and tanking at the Miami club in a statement Tuesday. 

The six-month probe was launched in February after Flores filed a lawsuit against the league, three of its teams—the Giants, Broncos and Dolphins—and 29 “John Doe” teams for racist practices in hiring. He also said that Miami owner Stephen Ross offered him a $100,000 bonus for each game lost in 2019 to better position the club in the ’20 draft and that Ross tried to get Flores to recruit “a prominent quarterback,” later identified as Tom Brady, who was under contract to another team during a meeting on the owner’s yacht.

The league found the Dolphins tampered with Brady in 2019 through ’20 and in the ’21 season, as well as former Saints coach Sean Payton in ’22. However, the league found “the Dolphins did not intentionally lose games during the 2019 season” and no one at the club “including Mr. Ross [instructed] Coach Flores to do so.”

“I am thankful that the NFL’s investigator found my factual allegations against Stephen Ross are true,” Flores’s statement began. “At the same time, I am disappointed to learn that the investigator minimized Mr. Ross’s offers and pressure to tank games especially when I wrote and submitted a letter at the time to Dolphins executives documenting my serious concerns regarding this subject at the time which the investigator has in her possession. While the investigator found that the Dolphins had engaged in impermissible tampering of ‘unprecedented scope and severity,’ Mr. Ross will avoid any meaningful consequence. 

“There is nothing more important when it comes to the game of football itself than the integrity of the game. When the integrity of the game is called into question, fans suffer, and football suffers.” 

According to the league, it found in its investigation that the Dolphins “competed hard to win every game, including at the end of the season when they beat Cincinnati and New England, despite worsening Miami’s position in the 2020 draft.” Ross did tell team president and CEO Tom Garfinkel, GM Chris Grier, senior vice president Brandon Shore and Flores that the ’20 draft should take priority over the team’s win-loss record in ’19 on various occasions. The NFL noted these comments troubled Flores so much that he expressed concern “in writing to senior club executives,” but they “assured Coach Flores that everyone, including Mr. Ross, supported him in building a winning culture in Miami.” According to the league, Ross never made those comments again. 

The NFL also investigated Flores’s claims that Ross offered him $100,000 for every game lost. The investigation found “there are differing recollections about the wording, timing, and context” of the offer, but “however phrased, such a comment was not intended or taken to be a serious offer, nor was the subject pursued in any respect by Mr. Ross or anyone else at the club.”

The league did find that Miami had “impermissible communications” with Brady and Payton’s agent, Don Yee. The Dolphins’ vice chairman and partner, Bruce Beal, had “numerous and detailed discussions” with Brady in 2019 and ’20 while Brady was under contract with the Patriots. These conversations began as early as August ’19 and continued through the season and postseason. The club also reached out to Brady no later than early December ’21 while he was with the Buccaneers where they discussed Brady becoming a “limited partner in the Dolphins and possibly serving as a football executive,” and possibly even playing with the Miami franchise, the league said.

Miami also contacted Yee in January 2022 about having Payton as the Dolphins’ next coach without the Saints’ permission. 

The investigation did prompt the league to levy punishment against Miami, including the franchise forfeiting its first-round pick in the 2023 draft and its third-round pick in the ’24 draft. It also suspended Ross through Oct. 17, 2022, and fined him $1.5 million. Beal was fined $500,000 and banned from league meetings for the rest of the season.

As for Flores, who was fired in January by the Dolphins and hired by the Steelers in February, his lawsuit remains. In June, the NFL asked a federal court to send the suit to arbitration. 

• All Dolphins: Dolphins Lose Two Draft Picks After Being Found Guilty of Tampering 

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