Buccaneers and Dolphins fans have something in common. They both hate the ongoing reports regarding the fact that Tom Brady would have been Miami bound, but for the Brian Flores lawsuit.
We’ve posted several items on the topic. Starting with the news that the Dolphins were planning a Tom Brady/Sean Payton package deal. We added more details this week, including the plan to make Brady a minority owner before he would have unretired to play for the team.
Ben Volin of the Boston Globe has reported on another interesting wrinkle in this saga. Via Volin, Brady would have gotten a “position high in the Miami front office,” similar to the job Derek Jeter previously held with the Miami Marlins.
The Flores lawsuit, filed the same day Brady announced his retirement, stopped that from happening. All of it. No Payton. No Brady, at least not in 2022.
It would be interesting to know whether Flores timed his filing to blow up the Brady-Miami boondoggle. Many think that Flores decided to pull the pin on his civil complaint as a reaction to the accidental text he received from Patriots coach Bill Belichick congratulating the wrong Brian for landing the Giants’ head-coaching job. Maybe Flores sued when he did to stick it to Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, keeping him from getting the outcome he coveted. (The Patriots also benefited from this move, since it kept Brady out of the division. When he became a free agent in 2020, some with the Patriots were convinced he’d end up in Miami.)
Whatever the reasons or motivations, the Flores lawsuit kept Brady from becoming a part owner, and apparently a key executive, in Miami. The plan would have become more delicate after that. There’s confidence in some circles that the Saints would have cut a deal to trade Payton’s coaching rights to the Dolphins, and that the Bucs eventually would have cut a deal to trade Brady’s playing rights to Miami.
Regardless, nothing was stopping Brady going to Miami as a minority owner and/or executive. Except the landmark lawsuit filed by Brian Flores.
Look at it this way. If Brady was simply going to Miami to be an executive, why did the Flores lawsuit keep it from happening? Because that wasn’t the ending point, only the beginning, for Brady’s broader business dealings in Miami.