One of the most serious and controversial allegations made by Brian Flores in his racial discrimination lawsuit against the NFL involves incentivized tanking. Flores claims that, during the 2019 campaign -- his first as head coach of the Miami Dolphins -- team owner Stephen Ross offered him $100,000 for every loss, in an effort to obtain better draft picks. Flores failed to comply, and the Dolphins finished 5-11 with the fifth-overall pick.
In response to the lawsuit, Ross issued a statement on Wednesday, saying in part, "I take great personal exception to these malicious attacks, and the truth must be known. His allegations are false, malicious and defamatory." On top of this situation, former NFL head coach Hue Jackson has also publicly accused the Cleveland Browns of incentivized losing during his first two years as their head coach (2016-17). The Browns have denied Jackson's accusations.
"This is an incredibly big claim," Maggie Gray said during Thursday's edition of the Maggie and Perloff show. "We're going down a really crazy and potentially treacherous path here. First of all, we don't know if more teams were offering this to coaches, no matter what the circumstances were... It's whether or not franchises start getting taken away from some of these owners. This is an old boys' network, but the one thing they're loyal to before each other is money. And anyone who messes with the money is going to get kicked out..."
"I could be wrong, but I don't think the Hue Jackson thing is going anywhere near the direction the Brian Flores thing is," Andrew Perloff said. "I don't think there's any kind of lawsuit against what the Browns were doing. I have trouble imagining that's raised to the level of the Flores case. There's going to be so many gray areas on this Jackson thing. Even the way he's talked about it two different ways in two days, I don't see any smoking gun here... The $100,000 is the main story, and the two stories aren't even really that close."
The entire NFL conversation between Branch and Maggie and Perloff can be accessed in the audio player above. Additional information and details about Flores' lawsuit can be found here.
You can follow the Maggie and Perloff Show on Twitter @MaggieandPerl and Tom Hanslin @TomHanslin.