DAVIE, Fla. — The Miami Dolphins‘ offense was teetering and playoff dreams were starting to slip away. After three straight three-and-outs with rookie quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, coach Brian Flores made the eye-opening, fourth-quarter call to his bullpen. Veteran QB Ryan Fitzpatrick was being called in to save the game — and he did it in a miraculous way — with Flores later describing FitzMagic as his “ninth-inning reliever.”
It was a decision few NFL head coaches would have the guts to make — yanking a rookie franchise QB for a 16-year journeyman with the playoffs on the line. The NFL isn’t baseball and two-quarterback systems have rarely worked in the modern era (since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger).
But Flores is proving he isn’t like many coaches. He knows his team, and his brutally honest style gives him the base to make these potentially volatile decisions without worry of it negatively impacting either quarterback or the locker room.
“With our whole quarterback situation, I think Flo does a good job in communicating with me, Fitz, as well as our coordinator and our quarterbacks coach, and kind of seeing, ‘Hey, are you in a groove?’ Or ‘What can we do better?’ And if not — it’s always communicated,” said Tagovailoa, who has been benched twice in the fourth quarter of a game, but remains the Dolphins’ starter with strong support from Flores. “There’s really good communication between all of us. I trust that he has the best interests of not just us, but the whole team.”
Beyond his handling of the NFL’s most unorthodox QB situation this season, Flores has made the Dolphins a winner sooner than expected. The 39-year-old coach undertook a massive rebuild when he was hired in February 2019. But after going 5-11 in 2019, including winning five of his last nine games, Flores has flipped the 2020 Dolphins to 10-5. A win against the Buffalo Bills on Sunday (1 p.m. ET, CBS) sends Miami to the playoffs for the first time since 2016.
Flores is never one to champion individual awards, but he should be the 2020 NFL Coach of the Year (the preseason odds on Flores to win the award were at 20-1, 11th best per William Hill Sports Book). There are many other worthy candidates — Buffalo’s Sean McDermott, Cleveland’s Kevin Stefanski, Pittsburgh’s Mike Tomlin, Kansas City’s Andy Reid, Green Bay’s Matt LaFleur — but none of them has exceeded Flores’ work in managing, developing and leading a turnaround season.
“It takes you all of 30 minutes in his presence to figure out this guy is going to be really good,” former Dolphins assistant and NFL head coach Jim Caldwell said of Flores on ESPN’s Adam Schefter podcast. “Coaching requires you to get individuals to do exactly what you want them to do in your own way. Some guys, that’s showing them from a methodical, pragmatic standpoint of here are the things that are going to help you improve. Other guys, you sense they have a little bit of an edge where you don’t really want to step out of line with this guy. That’s Brian — Brian has a little edge to him, smart, tough, great character.
“He can get those guys believing and doing exactly what he wants them to do. It’s no surprise that you’re seeing him doing well. You’re just seeing a little bit of what he has to offer. I think he’s going to be tremendous.”
There are a couple of stats that further support Flores’ case for Coach of the Year:
-
The Dolphins have the No. 1 scoring defense, allowing 18.8 points per game. The 2019 Dolphins were last in the league, allowing 30.9 points per game. Miami would be the first team to go from worst to first defense since the AFL’s 1966-67 Houston Oilers, per Elias Sports Bureau.
-
The Dolphins have a plus-96 scoring differential, tied for seventh best, after having a league-worst minus-188 point differential in 2019. Miami’s plus-284 improvement currently stands as the fourth-largest year-over-year increase in the Super Bowl era, per ESPN Stats & Information.
What lingers most is how Flores has handled the Tagovailoa-Fitzpatrick dynamic. He understands their skill sets; Tagovailoa’s efficiency and upside make him the better starter while Fitzpatrick’s knack for taking downfield risks and tight-window throws is what makes him a great “reliever.”
Not every Dolphins player has agreed with every decision Flores has made — even Fitzpatrick shared the real pains of being surprisingly benched in October — but thanks to Flores’ efforts to communicate with his players effectively, there hasn’t been a hint of locker room dissension (at least any that has been made public).
“I have a lot of peace with the decisions that I and we make because it’s sincerely genuinely and authentically based on winning football games and the people in this organization and our fans,” Flores said. “Communication is vital. If you’re honest and transparent, what more can you do? Hopefully that’s not just a football thing but hopefully that’s a life thing for them. You tell them the truth. You’re honest. The results of it are the results and sometimes you won’t be happy with that, but you won’t feel like someone is being deceitful with you or anything like that. That’s important to players. They want to just know.”
Dolphins fans should know they have a good coach in Flores, and one who has proved worthy of being named the NFL Coach of the Year.