Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross will face league investigation
By Brian Miller
The Miami Dolphins are going to have a very interesting and not so glowing off-season and Stephen Ross is the NFL’s crosshairs.
According to Chris Mortensen the NFL is going to investigate the accusations of former head coach Brian Flores. When the investigation will begin is unknown but when the “BullyGate” scandal erupted, the league jumped in pretty quickly.
The NFL will investigate the specific allegations that Brian Flores has made concerning Dolphins owner Stephen Ross offering him $100,000 per-loss incentives in 2019 to gain a better draft position, a league source said. Other potential rules violations also will be investigated.
— Chris Mortensen (@mortreport) February 2, 2022
This isn’t much different and it will be the second league investigation under Stephen Ross’ ownership.
Specifically, the NFL is focusing or should be focusing their attention on the accusations regarding tampering and the “Pay to Lose” scheme that Ross initiated with Flores in 2019. Of the two, the tampering may be hard to prove given only a few people would have been privileged to know and if Tom Brady was indeed the QB that has been reported, he isn’t likely going to agree to offer up information on the subject.
The 100K “bribe” if you want to call it that is another issue entirely. The league is likely aware of other teams doing similar things but proving that could be difficult. Earlier today, Cameron Wolfe reported that at least one person has corroborated what Flores has said and others may come forward as well if they did in fact know of the situation.
In terms of the racial aspects of the lawsuit, there likely would be no investigation into that considering Miami is one of the leading teams in diversity around the NFL. That being said, Flores alleges his firing was race related. That will be hard to prove on its own merit.
If the Dolphins are found to have been in violation of the league rules, they would face serious penalties that could include loss of draft picks, large fines on Stephen Ross and the organization. A worst case scenario for Ross would be the forcing of him to sell the team.
So far, the Dolphins have been quiet in regards to the accusations and the lawsuit which is understandable and not surprising.
Adding to all of it is the uncertainty of the teams future as it relates to ownership and penalties making the hiring of a new head coach a bit more difficult.