What Could Have Been With Brian Flores and the Miami Dolphins

When the Miami Dolphins play against the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday, I will look at the Vikings’ defense led by Brian Flores and think about what could have been. 

 Flores was the Dolphins’ head coach from 2019-2021, when the Team went through its last major rebuild before this one. Things started out poorly at 0-7 and, frankly, at times embarrassing with the lack of talent, but Flores kept the team together and finished 5-11, including the season finale against the New England Patriots in Foxborough, which never happened with Tom Brady at quarterback.

The future seemed bright, and the next couple of years the Dolphins finished around .500 and just missed the playoffs despite a lack of talent on offense.

The Dolphins even started 1-7 in 2021 but finished 9-8, which reflects Flores’s ability to keep the team together. 

However, after the season, the Dolphins fired him because of friction in the front office and him clashing with then-GM Chris Grier and owner Stephen Ross.

It turns out he often clashed with them and wasn’t on the same page about things like the 2019 tank and the 2020 draft of quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, which Flores wasn’t a fan of. It was once reported that Flores told Grier and Ross that this team wasn’t good for many years, and the constants were both Grier and Ross.  

You know what, in retrospect, he was right. 

The Dolphins stayed with Grier too long. While he did put together a talented roster, it was flawed, with injury-prone players. He made bad draft decisions and overspent on free agents instead of signing his homegrown players who helped build Flores’ culture. He totally mismanaged the roster and its finances. Now the Dolphins are back into a total rebuild. 

However, Grier is gone, and it appears that Ross is going away as the owner. 

Flores wasn’t a perfect coach. He fired his offensive coordinator and offensive line coaches every year. His last year, he had co-offensive coordinators, which honestly didn’t make sense. He might have rubbed certain players and people in the front office the wrong way, but he was a guy with a good structure, especially on defense, and was very disciplined, as the Dolphins were one of the least penalized teams in the league in his 3 years.

He made in-game adjustments that were missing under Mike McDaniel, and he had the pulse of the team and kept them focused in the down times, which was also missing under McDaniel. 

I know Flores sued the NFL for their lack of minority hiring and hiring practices, etc. However, Flores is a quality coach, and I’m sure if he gets a second chance, he will do things a little differently and succeed.  

I think Flores would have continued to do well with the Dolphins if he, the front office, and the owner were on the same page, but they weren’t, and nothing can reverse that. 

Ross was loyal to Grier, at fault, and maybe he should have seen his shortcomings a while ago or at least collaborated better to make it work with Flores, but the bridges were burned. 

Would the Dolphins have won a playoff game with Flores? I don’t know and will always wonder what could have been.Â