Unbelievable, Miami Dolphins former fired head coach Brian Flores has announced his return to the team with many reseasons given…
Unbelievably, former head coach Brian Flores of the Miami Dolphins, who was dismissed, has declared he will be rejoining the franchise for multiple seasons.
The Raiders and Chargers showed us on Sunday night that NFL clubs play on Sundays, and they play to win. However, NFL teams—and coaches in particular—play the game on all but two days of the week. The game revolves around politics, networks, and knowing the right person and the person who knows the right person. It also involves asking how his son’s collegiate baseball career is going—he plays for Brown, right? You gladhandle and schmooze to win the game instead of plotting, scouting, and coaching. You rush to get a better job, more power, and upward mobility. The NFL coaching ladder is a never-ending race, with one position at the top of every thirty-two molehills. Just now, Brian Flores lost one of them.
It was the relationships he struggled to establish and keep that caused him to lose them. That message has been made very evident. As Steve Wyche of NFL Network noted, “coaches don’t often get fired for coaching reasons.” Flores’s “relationship with [Dolphins GM Chris] Grier and Tua [Tagovailoa] had deteriorated to a pretty bad place,” according to ESPN’s Jeff Darlington. Furthermore, according to Stephen Ross, the owner of the Miami Dolphins, “an organization can only function if it is collaborative and works well together.” That person would know why Flores was dismissed if anyone did. It was him.
It’s not unexpected that some people found Flores’ coaching style offensive. Flores is one hot guy. He began his coaching career under one of the hardest-working men, Bill Belichick. He once attempted to take on the Cincinnati Bengals bench as a whole. Although coaches may not be fired for coaching errors, external observers frequently assess coaches based solely on their ability to coach. Flores was a skilled coach. The games were won by Flores.
As the Dolphins so astutely said when they announced Flores’s termination, he leaves Miami with a record of just 24–25, one game below.500. However, we must never forget the teams Flores was sent to during his brief stay with the Dolphins. One of the worst teams we’ve seen in a long time was that one from 2019. The Dolphins were the only team in the league with an offensive roster devoid of any All-Pro or Pro Bowl players heading into the season. Ryan Fitzpatrick, who was benched for Josh Rosen early in the season, was the team’s top rusher. They were 21.5-point underdogs against the Cowboys—they did not cover—after starting the season with 49-point losses to the Ravens and 43-point losses to the Patriots. This caused oddsmakers to create fictitious lines for a game between the Dolphins and the Alabama Crimson Tide, who were led at the time by rising junior quarterback Tua Tagovailoa (more on him later).
Flores led a sinking ship in Year 1, but that was always the goal. In their fire sale, the Dolphins acquired three additional first-round selections in exchange for offensive lineman Laremy Tunsil and defensive back Minkah Fitzpatrick, who were dealt away during the preseason. They were getting closer to the first choice, which is the ultimate goal for any rebuild worth its salt, with every loss. However, an unforeseen event occurred: Flores’s ship set sail.
As the Dolphins began to succeed, they adopted the unwavering bravery and fearlessness of their head coach. They have triumphed in five of their previous nine games, including their season-ending 27-24 victory against the New England Patriots, which eliminated their arch-rival and Flores’s mentor from the AFC’s second seed. Not only did they advance all the way to the fifth choice, but they also predicted future success. Because Flores had demonstrated that he could win despite having a weak roster, the Dolphins’ rebuild appeared solid—indeed, it was ahead of schedule. Ross was “thrilled that he has a coach, in Brian Flores, who can extract the most out of his roster and put together a team whose performance is greater than the sum of its parts,” according to a 2019 Miami Herald article.
I won’t claim to understand the thoughts of every Dolphins player on Flores. I won’t even pretend that each player genuinely shares their entire being on social media. However, those guys who responded—a former Patriot, an undrafted free agent who became a starting nickelback, and an offensive lineman from a tiny school who earned a starting position—are the kind of athletes who would be drawn to Flores’s coaching style. For Nik Needham to succeed in his profession, there has to be an open competition. Bill Belichick titles were won by difficult approaches, according to Jason McCourty. As a two-star prospect with one college offer, Robert Hunt understands the mentality of the underdog. Flores had a great rapport with these athletes; their energies were similar.
Darlington made reference to relationships other than these. For Ross, this was not the teamwork that mattered. Making connections with other players is fantastic, and it’s also pleasant to win games. But the objective is that. Flores had a losing game. Grier, Ross, and Flores were the three players in the game.
General manager, owner, and head coach. That is the foundation of every NFL team, and Ross is correct when he says that it is difficult to complete tasks in the NFL without cooperation from these three organizations. It is particularly difficult to complete the first and most important task in the NFL: selecting the best quarterback, without cooperation between the general manager and head coach. Ask Vic Fangio, the defensive mastermind and the grandfather of the most well-liked defensive scheme in the league today. The Broncos were unable to find the right quarterback in spite of their defensive prowess, skilled receivers, and improved offensive line. Vic Fangio was recently fired as head coach of the Denver Broncos. In Minnesota, ask Rick Spielman and Mike Zimmer—both of whom were dismissed on Black Monday despite their ten years of excellent work for the Vikings—because Kirk Cousins cost the team $115 million in contract space and four years of play, but only one postseason appearance. Despite its intricacy, the NFL is essentially a binary proposition: If you have the right quarterback, you are good; if not, you are not.
Disagreement among those who draft the quarterback is a horrible place to start, even though there are many different ways to draft the quarterback incorrectly, like the Dolphins did. According to reports, Ross showed little interest in Herbert, while Flores thought Herbert was better than Tua. A rift between the owner and head coach, with the general manager (naturally) supporting his boss on draft day, simplifies the subsequent trainwreck in Miami.
Prior to the bye week in 2020, Flores started Ryan Fitzpatrick over Tagovailoa. Shortly after, he talked about Tagovailoa’s NFL career being a careful, slow upstart. According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the Dolphins’ favorable projected standing in the NFL draft for 2021 made it more urgent for them to assess Tua in case they had to select another early quarterback in subsequent drafts. It is likely that Flores, who presumably didn’t want Tua, would be pressuring the front office and ownership to take Tua. In an attempt to cut down on fourth-quarter deficits that he felt Fitzpatrick could solve, Flores further pushed that envelope in Week 16 by benching Tua twice in his rookie campaign. That move miraculously preserved the Dolphins’ chances of making the playoffs.
When the offseason rolled along, Deshaun Watson was tradeable. Every Watson rumor revolved around the Dolphins, but once more, it appeared like the nucleus’s priorities were out of sync. Peter King stated at the trade deadline that Ross was not interested in pushing for Watson; Ian Rapoport said on Monday that one of the main factors luring Watson to Miami was Flores and that without him, Watson may lose interest. Tua was suspended indefinitely for this entire period while the team struggled to put together an offensive scheme that would suit him. The Dolphins passed on the quarterback class of 2021 in favor of selecting Alabama wide receiver Jaylen Waddle, one of Tua’s top collegiate targets. Eric Studesville, the coach of running backs, and George Godsey, the coach of tight ends, were promoted to co-offensive coordinator positions by Flores, marking his third (and possibly his fourth?) offensive coordinator hire in three years at the Dolphins. The Dolphins used the biggest RPO offense of any team this season, making the most of Tua’s quick release and astute decision-making while shielding him from deep throws with his average arm strength and extended dropbacks behind their dubious offensive line.
It didn’t work in the sense that Tua and the offense weren’t still awful, but it did work in the sense that things appeared better if you squinted extremely hard and just looked at a few friendly metrics. The Dolphins scored three points in Week 17 against the Titans on a rainy Miami day, keeping their postseason hopes alive with a victory. With a pick and four sacks, Tua completed 18 of 38 passes for 205 yards. This time, Superman came off the bench for Ryan Fitzpatrick.
Since Flores is the head coach and is accountable for the Sunday product, it is his fault that Tua and the offense failed for the second straight year. It has been difficult for Flores to get offensive coaches to work under him because of his combative nature. Out of the four offensive coordinators he hired over a three-year period, two were already on his staff, and the other two were former Patriots positional coaches with a combined one-year offensive coordinator experience. The lone external recruitment he made was enticing Chan Gailey to come out of retirement, something no one else was attempting to achieve and mostly due to Ryan Fitzpatrick’s presence on the team. Since Flores is in charge of the team, his offensive schemes have never been successful.
Even if there were problems with coaching and execution, the Tua selection was the first to go awry, ruining the entire group. Ross informed us that Flores was not fired as a result of his inability to get the Tua offense clicking. He was let go because he found it difficult to work with Ross and Grier, who were in charge of Tua’s drafting, as well as Tua, whom he had allegedly never wanted.
Relationships are two-sided, of course. Ross had two other options: either he let go of Tua and prioritized finding a new quarterback in the upcoming offseason, as he, Flores, and Grier had all agreed upon, or he fired Grier for not getting along with Flores and for struggling mightily in recent drafts, with Tua possibly being the biggest miss of all time relative to Herbert. However, Flores disagreed with the owner and didn’t think the quarterback who was chosen was the best option when it came to the crucial subject of selecting the appropriate quarterback. He was apparently expelled from Miami due to his disapproval.
It’s not always a bad move in a vacuum. Of course, an owner should aim for a cooperative core, but in the case where his head coach harbors open contempt for his starting quarterback,? Yes, he ought to address that right away. However, it is hard to rank Tua as a better asset for a young club that is still developing than Flores, given their current situation. Given the roster Grier gave him and Tua’s style of play, Flores won a lot of games that he had no right to win. It seems counterintuitive to fire him for those guys’ sake. Ross now has to find a head coach who is prepared to put up with Grier’s unstable team and Tua’s mediocre skill set, making it obvious that winning seasons alone won’t keep the coach position. Although there are usually plenty of opportunities for head coaches in the NFL, I think Ross may have less luck than he anticipates.
Ross might discover his lesson too late, but Flores has the chance to do so right now. Even if Flores won a lot of games, it may seem unfair that he was let go since he was unable to win the game. He infuriated his franchise’s owner. Retaining the respect of the team owner becomes a crucial competency if we want to evaluate NFL coaches based on their capacity to win championships, which means we must evaluate them based on their ability to keep their jobs. The Dolphins lost a fine coach in Flores on Monday, but if Flores can’t smooth out the rough edges on his resume, plenty of other clubs will pass on the same good coach. Similar to Tua, Flores is young and still has time, but as each season goes by and a bridge burns, the path toward progress gets smaller and steeper.
Black Monday in the NFL usually brings some unpleasant surprises; hopefully, Flores’ termination will be the worst of the season. This year, it’s a powerful reminder that coaches and general managers are merely telling us a portion of the tale as they try to win over and satisfy the owners of their teams with what we see on NFL Sundays. The game has just begun; the games are over.
