Brian Flores won 10 games as an NFL head coach and is one of the best defensive coordinators in the sport.

But questions about Flores’ controversial time running the Miami Dolphins still shadow his name, and it’s still uncertain just how interested teams are in giving Flores full control of a locker room again.

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Brian Flores has been a difference maker in Minnesota[/caption]

The Jacksonville Jaguars and New York Jets have been linked to Flores, who will coach Minnesota’s defense during an NFC Wild Card playoff game on Monday against the Los Angeles Rams.

“His [Flores’] ego grew so big that there wasn’t room for anybody else,” former NFL quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick said on Fitz and Whit.

Former NFL executive Marc Ross pushed back against the overall criticisms of Flores, and was adamant that the engineer of the league’s fifth-best scoring defense deserves a head coaching job in 2025.

“I saw that Ryan Fitzpatrick thing,” Ross, an NFL Network front office analyst, exclusively told talkSPORT.

“He’s a Harvard guy. I’m a Princeton guy. So you can’t really pay attention to what they have to say.

“He had valid points there, and that’s probably what Brian Flores was then.

“But how long ago was that? You know, he’s saying that as if people can’t change. And he (Flores) acknowledged he went to Pittsburgh and learned from Mike Tomlin.”

Flores went 24-25 overall with Miami from 2019-21.

The 43-year-old from Brooklyn, New York spent 2004-18 rising through the New England Patriots‘ system under Bill Belichick.

In 2022, Flores filed a racial-discrimination lawsuit against the NFL and several teams, saying the league was “rife with racism,” particularly in how it hired and promoted Black coaches.

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Flores had a rough ending in Miami[/caption]

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But he also studied under Bill Belichick and was part of the Patriots’ dynasty[/caption]

Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, who was coached by Flores in Miami, was especially critical.

“I don’t care who you are,” Tagovailoa told the Dan Le Batard Show.

“You could be the President of the United States. (If) you have a terrible person that’s telling (you) things that you don’t want to hear or probably shouldn’t be hearing, you’re gonna start to believe that about yourself.

“That’s sort of what ended up happening. It’s basically been two years of training that out of, not just me, but a couple of the guys as well that have been here since my rookie year all the way ’til now.”

Ross believes that Flores’ last three years with Pittsburgh and Minnesota have changed the coaching personality of one of the best defensive minds in the sport.

“Mike Tomlin knows how to run a program and he knows how to galvanize a team,” Ross said. “He knows how to galvanize a coaching staff.

“So, OK, here’s Flores, he goes into that situation. OK, let me see how this is done.

“Now he goes to Minnesota and he’s working with Kevin O’Connell who, obviously, what they’re doing there works and … he knows how to run an organization. He knows how to run a team.

“He knows how to galvanize a team in that sort of … not get along way, but just galvanize people. As opposed to the Patriot Way, where it’s beat people down.

“So Ryan Flores is a smart guy. It’s not like he went to those two situations of success and said, forget that. I’m going to go back to what I did at Miami and just start beating people down.”

Flores constructed the second-best run defense in the NFL this season, while the Vikings tied the Steelers for the top spot in takeaways (33).

If a team with a head coach opening in 2025 focuses on Flores’ past, all Minnesota’s DC has to do is turn on recent game tape and zero in on the present.

“Obviously, he’s gonna learn from that,” Ross said. “And that’s really what he has to do when he gets his interviews.

“I mean, just talk about that. He knows that’s coming. He knows those questions are coming.

“He’s a smart guy. He knows, OK, yeah, I learned from my mistakes in Miami. I was wrong. I did things the wrong way. I thought this was the way to go about it. It was wrong.

“I learned from Pittsburgh. I learned from being in Minnesota. I’m a different person now. I’m a different coach now.

“It’s fairly easy, to me, for Brian Flores when he approaches his interviews, of how to attack it, how to address it, and then go forward from there.

“And say, look at my coaching resume. I’ve learned as a person, as a head coach.”

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