Brian Flores says Bill Belichick had ‘back channel’ influence on Giants hiring Brian Daboll

Brian Flores made a somewhat obvious statement about the Giants’ hiring of Brian Daboll as head coach:

It was influenced by their mutual old boss, Bill Belichick, whose bumbling text messages ultimately led to Flores suing the NFL and three teams for racist hiring practices.

“I do think that there are back channel conversations and back channel meetings that are had that oftentimes influence decisions. I think that’s is a clear example of that,” he said of the Giants hiring Daboll and, per the Belichick texts, possibly landing on him before Flores was even interviewed.

“There’s Bill Belichick, his resume speaks for itself. He has influence. It was clear that that decision was made with his influence. That’s part of the problem. That needs to change. There needs to be a fair and equal opportunity to interview and showcase your abilities to lead and earn one of those positions,” Flores said on Jay Williams’ NPR podcast.

Flores and Daboll were both former Patriots assistants, with Flores rising on Belichick’s defensive staff from 2008 to 2018 and Daboll working several stints on both sides of the ball from 2000-06 and 2013-16. Not getting Belichick’s perspective on his two former longtime aides would be malpractice; it seems what Flores objects to is Belichick putting his thumb on the scale for yet another white coach.

The irony here is that the Giants are no stranger to pursuing Belichick assistants, hiring Joe Judge off Belichick’s staff in 2020 and trying to lure Matt Patricia before getting rejected in 2018. Belichick gave Giants ownership a droll endorsement of Judge — “He’s better than the last two guys you hired” — who ended up producing the same two-year failure as Ben McAdoo and Pat Shurmur and generally flamed out like most coaches do after getting promoted from a Patriots job.

Along with Bill O’Brien, Flores is arguably one of only two former Belichick assistants to be anything better than a complete disaster as an NFL head coach.

There’s nothing wrong with asking a successful coach about his staff. But maybe NFL teams could make an exception for ignoring Bill Belichick’s advice.