New York Giants have a chance to hire the right Brian (Flores)

By now, even the most fervent fan of the New York football Giants must realize that the organization hired the wrong Brian in 2022 when it hired Brian Daboll to be its 22nd head coach.

With one game remaining in a dismal 3-13 season and with the hiring season upon us, the Giants have an opportunity to correct that mistake by hiring the right Brian — Brian Flores, the Minnesota Vikings’ brilliant defensive coordinator.

If hired, Flores will be the first Black head coach in the Giants’ 101-year history. But that’s beside the point. Flores is one hell of a coach, and he’s just what a team with a precocious young quarterback (Jaxson Dart) and an emerging defensive star (Abdul Carter) needs.

I’m not arguing that Flores will be the greatest head coach in Giants history, but that he is what the Giants need now. He brings head-coaching experience, toughness and an unwavering insistence for accountability.

Of course, Flores also brings a significant piece of baggage that the Giants will have to accommodate if this counterintuitive (and admittedly, hard-to-imagine) marriage is to work.

Flores was fired after three seasons as head coach with the Miami Dolphins. In February 2022, Flores filed a racial discrimination class action suit against the NFL, the Dolphins, Giants and Denver Broncos, alleging racial discrimination in the hiring processes. The suit against the Dolphins was moved to arbitration. The suits against the Giants and Broncos are eventually headed to federal court.

Flores contends that the Giants interviewed him after the team already decided to hire Daboll. The suit alleges that the interview was done to check the Rooney Rule box — an NFL policy requiring teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching jobs.

Flores’ major piece of evidence is a text exchange with former Patriots head coach Bill Belichick — days before his interview with the Giants — congratulating “Brian” for getting the Giants’ job. In a subsequent text, Belichick admitted that the congratulatory note was intended for Brian Daboll.

Listen, I get it: The enmity — perhaps even contempt — the Giants have for Flores and that Flores may have for the Giants may be beyond repair. The Giants emphatically denied Flores’ claim and issued an extensive statement to that effect.

I also know that great things can be accomplished — a great nation can move forward — when powerful forces look beyond mistakes and wounded feelings in order to achieve a common goal: building a winning team or building and maintaining a great democracy.

We have lived through that painful history, and I’d argue, we’re living through it now. Progress often depends on facing up to mistakes and anesthetizing the past.

The Giants may see the Flores suit as a deal killer. In fact, the suit underlines the courage, candor and moral clarity that will make the Giants — or any franchise — stronger. Coaches tell players that in order to grow they must be willing to hear the truth. The same is true of NFL franchises and multibillionaire owners: Growth and progress depend on being willing to hear the truth and make the adjustment.

The truth is that the Giants made a mistake in hiring Daboll over Flores. They may not have thought so at the time, but now they know.

Flores’ no-nonsense style of coaching undoubtedly rubbed some executives and players in Miami the wrong way. Like his defenses, Flores’ blitzing, take-no-prisoners approach can be a hard sell, particularly in a front office corporate setting. If he has learned anything from the Miami experience, Flores has learned to be more of a diplomat.

But the truth is still the truth.

In his lawsuit against the Dolphins, Flores alleged that the team owner, Stephen M. Ross, offered him incentives — $100,000 per loss — to lose games in 2019 to put the Dolphins in position to earn a higher draft position.

Why would Flores lie about something like that?

He also alleges that the Dolphins’ owner pressured him into recruiting “a prominent quarterback” at the end of the 2019 season. Flores said he refused so as not to violate the NFL’s tampering rule. He later described how the owner invited him to his yacht for lunch in the winter of 2020 and was informed that the quarterback in question just happened to be arriving at the marina for an impromptu meeting. Flores said he refused the meeting and left the yacht.

In 2022, the NFL did in fact fine the Dolphins for tampering, but Flores had effectively walked the plank so far as his future in Miami was concerned.

Flores was not totally on board with quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, and the tension between the young quarterback and Flores was well-documented. Flores admittedly coached Tagovailoa hard and even benched him on several occasions.

Turns out that Flores was right about Tagovailoa. Last month, Mike McDaniel — who succeeded Flores as the Dolphins’ head coach and was one of Tua’s greatest advocates — was finally fed up with the quarterback’s lack of production and benched him for the season.

Flores was right, even though he admitted that, in retrospect, he may have been a little too harsh with Tagovailoa. On the other hand, Tagovailoa may have been too fragile for Flores’ taste. A quarterback like the Giants’ Dart may be a lot more to his liking.

There was also friction between Flores and Chris Grier, the Dolphins’ then-general manager, about team and roster building. Grier, who is African American, had been with the Dolphins for several seasons. He ultimately won the power struggle between the two when Flores was fired after three seasons despite having back-to-back winning campaigns.

Ultimately, the Dolphins came to the conclusion that Grier was not the answer either and fired him last October.

Flores was right again.

But being right does not necessarily lead to being hired, and many of us feared that in taking on the NFL Flores would be blackballed by the NFL.

Fortunately, Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin — another paragon of moral clarity — stepped in and hired Flores to be the Steelers’ senior defensive assistant and linebackers coach in 2022. During an interview in May 2024, Tomlin told me that he was intentional in hiring Flores: “If I didn’t hire that guy, man, would he be employable now?” Tomlin asked.

A year later in February 2023, the Minnesota Vikings wisely decided to bring Flores into the fold and make him the team’s defensive coordinator. In two seasons, Flores’ acumen as a defensive architect has become legendary.

He can do the same things for the Giants as its head coach if the organization is big enough to admit that it made a mistake in hiring Daboll. Flores is a truth-teller, and the Giants have some key young players who need to hear the truth. Dart needs to hear the truth about toning down his reckless playing style. Who better to hear that from than Flores, who saw Tagovailoa’s career nearly implode because he took too many shots?

Carter needs to hear the truth about accountability. Who better to hear it from than Flores, whose signature is building terrorizing defenses and producing great defensive players?

More than that, the NFL needs to hear the truth about its well-intentioned-but-flawed Rooney Rule and how so many teams are circumventing the rule by checking boxes and ultimately hiring who they want to hire.

The Mara family, which owns the Giants, has an honorable legacy in the NFL. John Mara, the co-owner and president/CEO of the Giants, is an honorable man. Jerry Reese became the Giants first African American general manager in 2007. During Reese’s 11-year tenure, the Giants won two Super Bowls. The fact remains, however, that the Giants have never hired a Black head coach. The Giants deny Flores’ claim and insist that the team followed the Rooney Rule guidelines. Flores insists that the Giants knew they were going to hire Daboll when Flores was brought in for his interview.

What cannot be denied is that after two consecutive failed hires, the Giants need an experienced head coach with Flores’ courage, toughness and conviction. Will the organization be big enough to admit another mistake (remember Joe Judge?) and hire Flores to bring one of the NFL’s flagship programs back to glory?

I doubt it, but it’s not often that a franchise gets a second chance to change its trajectory. The Giants have an opportunity to do just that.

All they have to do this time is hire the right Brian.

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