Brian Flores expands lawsuit against NFL, and the Lions unexpectedly become part of growing situation
The Lions have found their way into the Brian Flores lawsuit against the NFL. Why that’s not a major concern
In case you’ve been hiding under a rock for years, current Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores has been locked in a lawsuit with the NFL over its team’s hiring practices. Specifically, when it comes to hiring minority coaches.
Things just got a little deeper with this story this week when Front Office Sports and ESPN reported that Flores’ legal team served subpoenas to 25 NFL teams looking to get hiring records and communications related to his lawsuit.
Neither article actually listed teams among those 25, but it’s not hard to understand how the Detroit Lions are one of those teams by simply doing a process of elimination. We know the Houston Texans, Arizona Cardinals, Tennessee Titans, Miami Dolphins, New York Giants, and Denver Broncos are already included and named in this lawsuit.
Take the 32 NFL teams and subtract those and the Vikings, and you get the remaining 25 teams. Among these is the Lions.
What does being subpoenaed by Brian Flores and his legal team mean for the Lions?
Let’s start right here by saying that does not automatically indicate the Lions had any wrongdoing in any of their hiring processes. This also doesn’t mean that the Lions are even being accused of wrongdoing.
What it means is that Flores’ lawyers are basically casting a giant net across the NFL to gather emails, interview records, hiring communications, and internal discussions related to coaching hires and the Rooney Rule so that they can best plead their case against the league. This is a fairly common practice in the discovery process of lawsuits.
One of the biggest reasons you probably won’t have to worry about the Lions and Flores is that they never had a chance to even interview him. Flores was hired by the Dolphins in 2019 when Matt Patricia was still the Lions’ head coach. He was fired in 2021 after the Lions had already hired Dan Campbell.
In addition to that, when the Lions did their search that resulted in the hiring of Brad Holmes and Dan Campbell, they hired the Fritz Pollard Alliance to assist them in their search. This alliance is one of the leading firms out there that specializes in helping teams interview and hire minority candidates.
While the Lions did not do that in 2021, they went far beyond what many teams have been sadly doing by interviewing one minority candidate to just satisfy the Rooney Rule. They interviewed Anthony Lynn, Robert Saleh, Marvin Lewis, Eric Bieniemy, and Todd Bowles.
We’ll see where this all goes in due time, but the Lions will likely have no problem turning over their communication as they don’t appear, at least from the outside, to have done anything wrong. If anything, they may be used as an example of doing things the right way.
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