Did the Dolphins offer Brian Flores hush money to stay silent after he was fired?
The coach said that’s what happened, and he said he left millions on the table by refusing to sign the deal.
In an interview with Bryant Gumbel that is airing now on HBO Real Sports, the former Dolphins head coach said he was offered millions of dollars to stay quiet about his firing in Miami.
New details are emerging in the Flores fallout.
The former head coach said he was asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement following his dismissal from the Fins.
An NDA is a legal confidentiality understanding that prohibits ideas and information from being shared with third parties, i.e. another NFL team or a new employer.
“Just signing that separation agreement would have silenced me,” said Flores in the HBO Real Sports interview.
Flores alleges that the Dolphins offered him a substantial sum to sign the NDA.
“A lot, a lot, a lot,” said Flores the interview.
“It was a contract,” said Brain Flores’ attorney Douglas Widor, “and to Coach Flores’ credit, he wasn’t going to sign that because what he wanted wasn’t about the money. If it was about the money, he would have signed it. What he did instead was file this lawsuit so that he could help out other coaches now and in the future.”
In a separate part of the interview, Gumbel continued to press Flores.
The show transcript reads: “It was Steve Ross who asked you to sign the NDA, ultimately, the owner of the Dolphins. You chose not to,” said Gumbel.
Brian Flores responded, “Uh-huh,” affirming this was true.
Once the Dolphins found out, the team swiftly released a statement reading in part, “This latest assertion by Brian Flores that Steve Ross mentioned an NDA to him is categorically false. This just did not happen, and we simply cannot understand why Brian continues this pattern of making unfounded statements that he knows are untrue.”
According to NFL insiders, having a coach sign an NDA after being fired is a common practice. The Dolphins statement does not deny that Flores was offered that agreement by the team, it denies the fact that Ross was the person that asked Flores to sign the NDA.
In the class action lawsuit filed Feb. 1, Flores alleges that the Dolphins owner is guilty of tanking and tampering, most notably offering him $100,000 per game in 2019 to purposefully lose in order to improve the Dolphins’ draft pick.