Okay, this isn’t just ANY Florida man. This is the freakin’ GOAT we’re talking about.
February 1, 2022: Tom Brady announces his retirement after 22 seasons and seven Super Bowl titles. Social media springs to life as athletes and celebrities rush to pile on the praise. The GOAT is finally hanging it up.
Later the same day, recently fired Dolphins head coach Brian Flores files a $100 million lawsuit against the NFL and three of its franchises. Flores alleges discrimination in the interview process with the Giants and Broncos as well as on the part of Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, also claiming that Ross offered him payoffs to lose games in 2019 to improve the franchise’s draft pick.
Alright, so there’s a lot to unpack here. First, Tom Brady retiring was maybe a little sudden, but the guy practically has his AARP card, so this wasn’t shocking. Then there’s the Flores lawsuit. At this point, we can’t say for sure if the Giants and Broncos engaged in any unethical or illegal conduct, but what is clear is that in late January, Patriots coach Bill Belichick texted Flores letting him know the Giants job was pretty much in the bag. The problem, of course, is that the appropriate recipient of that text was Brian Daboll, not Brian Flores. (Daboll is White, Flores is Black.) Flores, in fact, had not even interviewed for the Giants job yet. Belichick quickly apologized to Flores for the error, but the damage was done. Flores filed the lawsuit the next week.
The Dolphins soon found themselves at the center of a media firestorm. From a PR perspective, the lawsuit was a nightmare. However, the worst was yet to come. Turns out, Brady was reportedly in talks with the Dolphins to join the organization as a minority owner. If he decided to come out of retirement, he may have even tried to make a deal to play for the Dolphins as well. Ross, a fellow Michigan alum, had likely made even earlier overtures to Brady when he was with the Patriots in 2020, with this issue actually being included in the Flores lawsuit as a possible case of tampering. On top of that, Miami was also interested in acquiring head coach Sean Payton from the Saints, a move that the Saints were actively resisting. Needless to say, Brady saw what a mess the Dolphins were dealing with and decided not to pursue the opportunity in Miami. Payton retired, and Brady declared he had “unfinished business” in Tampa and that he would return to the Bucs.
In the months since, the Dolphins ended up making the big splash of the offseason by luring Tyreek Hill away from Kansas City. While offensive line issues will likely persist, Hill and a reinforced running back room have Miami ready to see if Tua Tagovailoa is in fact the QB of the future. With one year to decide if they want to pick up Tua’s 2024 option, this might be his last big chance to prove himself.
If Tua doesn’t perform in 2022, will Ross try again with Brady? While retirement can’t truly be far off for the GOAT, the idea of a year or two with Cheetah and Co. might have Tom thinking about some more championship hardware. If rookie head coach Mike McDaniel doesn’t pan out, will Ross try to bring fellow Michigan man Jim Harbaugh down to Florida? Harbaugh has a relatively new contract, but the buyout is relatively cheap. We don’t know what will happen, but if Ross wants a Super Bowl badly enough, he may pull out all the stops to get his way.
Here’s the real question: did Bill Belichick accidentally send that text to the wrong Brian? After coaching Brady for 20 years, Belichick was intimately aware of the consequences of facing him twice a year in AFC East play, as he would have to if Brady joined the Dolphins. Could the six-time champion coach be devious enough to pretend to send a text to the wrong contact in his phone? If he had reliable intel from inside the Giants organization that they had made up their mind before interviewing Flores, perhaps he used that information to his advantage. Maybe he was engineering a way to make the Miami move untenable for Brady.
Maybe it’s a stretch. Maybe it’s not.