Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores has a tiger by the tail. And he’s pulling it, hard.
Via Daniel Kaplan in an item published by Front Office Sports, Flores will be amending his complaint against the NFL and multiple teams on Wednesday to include a claim for retaliation. The alleged basis for the retaliation is Flores’s opposition to the NFL’s enforcement of its arbitration provisions in employment agreements.
The argument is simply stated, even if it will be difficult to prove. He’ll argue that his head-coaching prospects have been blocked by his aggressive, and to date successful, assault on the NFL’s habit of requiring coaches to agree to contracts that require all disputes to be resolved by arbitration ultimately controlled by the league.
Flores has secured multiple victories on that front, culminating in a federal appeals court scrapping the league’s longstanding practice of forcing coaches to submit to an in-house procedure that has the head of the organization — the Commissioner — ultimately responsible for processing and deciding claims made against the NFL and/or its teams.
Flores, who continues to be one of the most successful defensive coordinators in the NFL, has been unable to get a second head-coaching job since being fired by the Dolphins after the 2021 season. (His pending lawsuit includes a retaliation claim against the Texans for not hiring him in the aftermath of the filing of his race discrimination case against the NFL and multiple teams.)
Kaplan also reports that Flores has sought information from all 32 teams about their hiring practices, now that the discovery process is moving forward.
Flores filed his lawsuit in early 2022. For most of the past four-plus years, the case has been bogged down as to the threshold question of whether the claims will be processed in arbitration, or in open court.
It’s gutsy, to say the least, for Flores to keep pushing these issues as aggressively as he is. Businesses like the NFL don’t like to be sued. It will make it harder for Flores to get another head-coaching job, even if he’s been kept out due to improper motivations.
Still, if he truly believes in his position, he’s doing the right thing by refusing to back down.
That said, proving retaliation will be a challenge. No one will admit to it. His lawyers will be required to show through circumstantial evidence and/or aggressive cross-examination that the stated reason(s) for not hiring Flores are a pretext for a prohibited consideration.
