On Tuesday, it was revealed that former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores had filed a lawsuit against the NFL and its teams — three teams were specifically named.
Among them was the New York Giants, who Flores accused of racist hiring practices, claiming they forced him through a “sham” interview. The purpose, the filing stated, was to portray serious interest in a minority candidate simply to satisfy the league’s Rooney Rule.
The Giants promptly issued a short statement denying the allegations.
“We are pleased and confident with the process that resulted in the hiring of Brian Daboll. We interviewed an impressive and diverse group of candidates. The fact of the matter is, Brian Flores was in the conversation to be our head coach until the eleventh hour. Ultimately, we hired the individual we felt was most qualified to be our next head coach,” the statement read.
On Thursday evening, the Giants released a secondary statement. This time, they called Flores’ allegations “disturbing and simply false.”
Brian Flores has raised serious issues in the filing of his complaint. The specific claims against the Giants and Mr. Flores’ allegations about the legitimacy of his candidacy for our head coach position are disturbing and simply false.
After we interviewed six exceptional and diverse candidates, the decision on who we would hire as head coach was made on the evening of January 28, one day after Mr. Flores spent an entire day in our offices going through his second interview for the position, meeting with ownership and other staff members, and receiving a tour of our facility. (See the itinerary below). There is additional concrete and objective evidence to substantiate we did not make our decision until the evening of the 28th.
The allegation that the Giants’ decision had been made prior to Friday evening, January 28, is false. And to base that allegation on a text exchange with Bill Belichick in which he ultimately states that he “thinks” Brian Daboll would get the job is irresponsible. The text exchange occurred the day before Coach Daboll’s in-person interview even took place. Giants’ ownership would never hire a head coach based only on a 20-minute zoom interview, which is all that Mr. Daboll had at that point.
The Giants expanded on the Bill Belichick text messages, stating that the New England Patriots head coach does not speak for the organization and does not have a current affiliation with the team.
Further, the Giants shared their timeline on the hiring process, including Flores’ contact and involvement in establishing interviews.
In addition, Mr. Belichick does not speak for and has no affiliation with the Giants. Mr. Belichick’s text exchange provides no insight into what actually transpired during our head coaching search.
It has been well documented how much research and due diligence we did on Mr. Flores as it related to his candidacy. John Mara called Mr. Flores two days after he was dismissed in Miami. Mr. Mara expressed to Mr. Flores in that January 12 call that once we had our new general manager in place, we would begin the process of hiring our head coach and we wanted to meet with Mr. Flores because we considered him a serious candidate for the position. Mr. Mara and Mr. Flores then had their first formal conversation in a 25-30 minute zoom call on January 18 (at Mr. Flores’ request) to further discuss his candidacy.
In between those initial conversations and Mr. Flores’ in-person interview on January 27, there were several other communications between Mr. Flores and members of our organization. This included a dinner with our newly hired general manager, Joe Schoen, the night before Mr. Flores’s in-person interview. The consensus from within the Giants organization after this dinner remained that Mr. Flores was an outstanding candidate, and we looked forward to sitting down with him in person the next day.
Our hiring process and, most certainly, our consideration of Mr. Flores was serious and genuine. We are disappointed to learn that Mr. Flores was under the mistaken impression the job had already been awarded.
Finally, the Giants doubled-down on their decision to hire Brian Daboll as their next head coach, using Flores’ own words to justify the decision.
In his CBS interview yesterday, Mr. Flores was asked if “clubs have the right to hire the person they think is the best qualified for the job or the person they feel is right for them?” Mr. Flores responded “They do. That’s very reasonable to me . . .”. That is exactly what we did.
We hired Brian Daboll as our head coach at the conclusion of an open and thorough interview process. No decision was made, and no job offer was extended, until the evening of January 28, a full day after Mr. Flores’ in-person interview and day-long visit to the Giants.
The full itinerary for the Flores interview in East Rutherford was also made public:
Brian Flores Interview Itinerary – Head Football Coach
January 27, 2022
8:45am – arrival at Quest (Joe Schoen)
9:00am – meet w/ John Mara, Chris Mara, Steve Tisch, & Joe Schoen
12:00pm – Lunch / Facility Tour – Tim McDonnell
1:00pm – Pat Hanlon/Jen Escalante/Dion Dargin
1:45pm – Ronnie Barnes/Jessie Armstead
2:30pm – Allison Stangeby/Pete Guelli
3:30pm – Joe Schoen
More to come…