Don't get what you want, just cry racism.
Not right to marginalize claims of racism in this way IMO.
If I felt I was the victim of racism, I'd cry racism.
Based on the examples from the lawsuit presented so far, the claims of racism certainly seem dubious.
Thing is racism is tied to the policy that was put in place to deter racist/biased exclusion of minorities from head coach opportunities. If owners/gms of those teams aren't following that policy it can indeed be cited as racist practice. Even if race has nothing to do with your choice of coach you have to abide by the policy.
Same goes for firing a coach with a winning record. If that coach happens to be considered "a good coach" by players and staff, on top of that winning record two out of three seasons, with no bad behavior reported then race may be brought up as possible reasoning of firing. Most of the Dolphins reasoning for firing Flores are certainly not grounds for termination.
Now I don't think race was a issue in firing Flores only that Flores wouldn't tank and do things upper management wanted. Yet Giant's and Broncos appear to have violated the hiring policy. Sure this is why the league already put out a reminder.
Flores built a horrible offensive coaching staff. He had 4 OCs and 4 offensive line coaches in 3 years. He fired one veteran offensive line coach 4 days into the 2019 season because he had a gut feel. He put a rookie offensive line coach in charge of a line with all young players. He had co-offensive coordinators. Almost every young offensive linemen regressed this year under his coaching to the point where they were the the worst rated o line in football. They had a 1-7 start which included losses to a winless Indy team, Jacksonville and Atlanta. This essentially eliminated them from the playoffs in December unless they could run the table. He didn’t play the same “amoeba” defense that was so effective in 2020 until after week 8. Their win streak that put them over .500 included wins against the Jets twice, NYG, Carolina, the Ravens to start a long losing streak, a Covid depleted Saints team. The one impressive victory was against the Patriots in a meaningless week 18 game. In the one challenging/meaningful game Flores did not have a plan for the bad weather and passed it 80% of the time despite having a QB who is really bad in bad weather. Speaking of said QB, it was reported that they cussed each other out at halftime of that game when Flores told him “If I knew you were going to be this bad, I should’ve drafted Mac Jones”, at which point Tua screamed back “F you, you need to learn to take to people”.
Yet the national narrative is he was a good coach. Informed Dolphins fans beg to differ.
The Dolphins are a garbage franchise who Flores took to two straight winning seasons. Prior to that, they had two winning seasons in their previous 14 seasons
Out of all of that, that’s all you can come up with? I gave like 10 reasons he might have been fired that have nothing to do with race. Flores is a brilliant defensive coordinator. But he couldn’t assemble and retain an offensive coaching staff to save himself.
And a winning season is not the barometer that they should be measured by. Fun fact, since 2003 Miami has 6 winning seasons to the Niners' 5. Does that make Miami more successful? Also, the Cs are having a winning season yet there is a very long thread about why Ime should be fired. I know Ime is black but I don’t for a second think they Cs management is racist. But if they decided to move on from Ime I’d understand.
Miami started this rebuild not because they were horrible, but because they were tired of mediocrity. Adam Gase went 23-25 over 3 years. Flores went 24-25. Can you sit there for a second and tell me you think Flores would like have led this team to a Super Bowl contender, even if they got Deshaun Watson (and gave up the huge draft capital and cap space that would take)? As an informed Dolphins fan, I have my serious doubts. So time to move on. A 9-8 season fueled by one of the easiest stretch of games in modern NFL history shouldn’t sway that.
I also might add that they retained Chris Grier as GM who is also black and a case could easily be made for his dismissal. I think a racist organization a) probably wouldn’t have hired Grier and Flores in the first place and b) had the perfect opportunity to clean house and would have taken it.