The events of this week aren’t so much about one man’s experience as they are about years of frustration finally reaching a tipping point. AlbertBreer talks to Ron Rivera in the wake of Brian Flores’s class-action lawsuit
But we’re starting with the story of the week, and one that’s sure to be one of the stories of the year in the NFL.
In this case, the NFL itself isn’t claiming there’s no issue. In fact, the league office itself has pulled just about every lever to try and fix the problem in recent years. And the problem now is very clear—owners aren’t responding to the league’s action with action of their own. That’s how Flores got to his own personal tipping point, which is really reflective of a collective frustration in the coaching and executive ranks beginning to boil over.
A decade after that, Rivera wound up hiring Turner as his offensive coordinator in Carolina, and brought aboard Turner’s son Scott as quarterbacks coach. Scott Turner is now Rivera’s offensive coordinator in Washington. “The hard part for him there, he was the last guy hired,” Rivera said. “So all the guys that were on his coaching list, they were already locked in. He had to hire guys that he really didn’t want to have to hire. He had to keep guys he didn’t want to keep. In fact, that’s what got him, some of those guys that were kept, were the guys that everybody was coming back to and whispering about, ‘This, that and the other thing.’ And that causes a problem.
“The conversations I’ve had with the commissioner, with his office, with owners, I do sense a heightened awareness,” Graves said. ‘There’s been improved processes, more inclusive processes with respect to interviewing and all of that. We’re at the point now where those areas have certainly been given a lot of attention, and there’s certainly things there that point to areas of promise.
And it recalls to Rivera not just how he felt all those years ago, but also a pattern that remains to this day. Payton in New Orleans. They’ve kicked tires on Flores, Pederson, Buccaneers offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich, Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn, and their own special teams coordinator, Darren Rizzi, conducting a few of those interviews in Mobile this week. And yes, they had to comply with the Rooney Rule, so the process couldn’t just begin and end with Allen. But I think the Saints are doing more than just taking a cursory look at these guys.
“So we get through practice, we’re in stretch lines and we’re all hyping it, I’m hyping it up. And then I walk into the locker room. As we’re walking in, there’s a crowd close to my locker. And as I get closer, there’s three tires from my car. And he hid one of them. They put my car on blocks. Literally, I was like, ‘What the hell is going on?’ There were three tires! And I looked at my car and sure enough, my car is on blocks.
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