The New York Giants have been relatively tight-lipped since being slapped with a lawsuit from Brian Flores, who interviewed for the team’s head coaching position earlier this offseason.
Flores alleges the Giants ran him through a “sham” process to give the impression a minority candidate was a serious contender for the job. In fact, Flores was so certain of that he filed the lawsuit before his interview process with the organization had even been completed.
As Flores left East Rutherford following his final interview, the Giants were immediately served with the lawsuit.
The team issued two statements after news of the lawsuit broke — the first denied the allegations and the second insinuated that Flores was flat-out lying. And that was a stance Giants co-owner John Mara doubled down on while speaking to the media at the NFL owners meetings in Florida on Sunday.
“I’m not settling,” Mara said bluntly. “Because the allegations are false and we’re very comfortable with our hiring process. It was a fair process and we ended up making the decision we made based on a lot of factors, none of which had anything to do with race.”
As part of the lawsuit, Flores shared an unfortunate text exchange between he and New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, who has a history with the Giants organization. In them, Belichick congratulates Flores for getting the job but had been mistaking him for Brian Daboll, whom the team ultimately hired as their next head coach.
Flores claims the mistaken text is proof of systemic racism in the NFL’s hiring practices and that Belichick still has heavy influence in East Rutherford.
The Giants also denied that claim in a previous statement, but Mara chose to elaborate on it a bit anyway.
“I haven’t spoken or communicated with Bill since we played [the Patriots] in the preseason last summer and to my knowledge nobody in the organization has communicated with him either,” Mara said.
Why hasn’t Mara contacted Belichick for clarification on the whole situation?
“Why should I?” Mara remarked. “We made our hiring decision and we’re happy with that decision. I think the truth will come out eventually: He didn’t speak with anybody in our organization.”
And that — for now — is that. Mara and the Giants will see Flores in court.
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