In Year 2 of the Brian Flores era we will see if the Miami Dolphins coach is growing | Opinion

The wall painted with all the reminders about how disciplined, winning football teams act that Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores loved so much last year is gone.

The aqua-and-orange structure served as a reminder that smart teams avoid pre-snap penalties, know the rules, compete on every play. The wall, holding up a section of what used to be a media room, was called the TNT wall — because it “Takes No Talent” to avoid mental mistakes or give effort.

Whenever Dolphins players broke the codes inscribed on that wall during practice last year, they’d have to sprint from one of the adjacent practice fields to the wall and back as penance.

But that Year One Flores era wall has been painted over now.

This is a new year. The Dolphins are a new team. And this season, fundamentals are still preached, but success now requires talent, too.

So Flores is seemingly making adjustments.

That’s good because things are different this year, including rules on handling a pandemic that initially limited the practice duration for all teams. So Flores says he stripped the wall to adjust to a shorter practice schedule.

“From a scheduling standpoint, there’s only so much time we can be out there, especially in the early part,” Flores explained during training camp. “So it was 90 minutes the first day, an hour and 45 [the next]. There’s not as much time as there was [last year], so as far as running to the wall or anything like that, I’d rather just get onto the next play and not lose a rep for another guy, which in other years that’s not the case.

“You don’t have enough time to do that and get all of the reps in. So as a staff, we’re kind of running off the field because we hit our 90 minutes or we hit our hour and 45 minutes or we hit our two hours.”

That’s a good explanation. But it probably isn’t the whole explanation. Even Flores acknowledges that.

“We’re at the point in training camp now where we do have enough time so we could incorporate [a run to the TNT wall],” he said. “But don’t worry. I hammer these guys when we have penalties pretty good in the meetings.

“You can ask them about it and it’s not something we take lightly at all. I just felt like we’re better off [responding] like we would in a game: Let’s just move on and go on to the next play and we’ll hammer time them later in the day.”

Yeah, still not the explanation we need.

The hope here is the reason Flores moved on from the TNT wall is because it was, well, time to adapt. It was time to take a different approach.

Time to grow.

The Dolphins’ roster in 2020 is far superior than the one he had to start the 2019 season. And the players on this roster are more mature.

They’ve been other places. Done other things — some of them have even won Super Bowls.

So running to the wall in August South Florida temps during a practice probably wasn’t going to fly with such veteran players. Flores might have recognized that. Hopefully, he did.

Which brings us to this: Is that a sign of growth by a coach before our very eyes?

Is it a sign Flores can adapt and correct, not just his players, but also himself?

The discarded TNT wall’s punishment could be a sign Flores, about to start his second regular season, is growing into his job. And to hear him talk of his relationship with the locker room, that also seems like another sign growth is happening.

“I think it’s like any relationship you have — friendships, relationships — over time, relationships evolve,” he said. “I think the players who were here a year ago, they’re more comfortable with me, [and] I’m more comfortable with them.

“With the new players that are here, you put the time in to get to know them, get to know them on the field [and] off the field, what some of their quirks are, and try to build that trust and build that camaraderie.

“It’s been — obviously a year later, some of those relationships are stronger than they were a year ago, which I think that’s the way it should be. I’m sure that’s the way it is with most relationships.”

That definitely isn’t the way it was with some players during last year’s training camp. Flores, 39 now, came to the Dolphins young and riding a Super Bowl victory against the Los Angeles Rams. And he immediately marked his turf.

He challenged veterans who had been with the Dolphins for years to do things his way and, frankly, many didn’t love it.

“I’m not with this,” veteran linebacker Kiko Alonso said succinctly, referring to the new style Flores brought to Miami’s head coach position.

Flores butted heads with some veterans as well as some young players. Usually the disagreement had one underlying reason: Flores demanded things be done his way.

That led to infamous disagreements with Kenny Stills and Minkah Fitzpatrick. The two players have different experiences and world views but both similarly challenged the new coach.

With Stills it was kind of sophomoric. Flores felt the receiver was not playing or practicing at his best in the preseason while criticizing Dolphins owner Stephen Ross and music mogul Jay-Z for off-field matters of politics and social justice.

Flores wanted Stills to concentrate on playing better, so he challenged him during a practice by playing something like eight Jay-Z songs in a row. The coach said he was trying to motivate Stills, but it evolved into something of a battle of wills one practice period after another.

“The next drill was one-on-ones, and he put me up first and said, ‘Win the route.’ I won the route, caught the ball and pointed it back at him, and I guess that was too much,” Stills told NFL.com. “He brought me up to the office after practice and said, ‘Play better. Practice better.’ He told me I wasn’t playing to my ability and that I needed to focus on sports and focus on the team. And that’s why he said he played the songs — to see if I could focus.

“I got underneath his skin,” Stills added. “The [other players] just kind of felt it was a power struggle between us, and I think it was a bad look, from his perspective, for a player to be getting at the coach like that. And from then on, I kind of felt I was going to be out of there.”

Stills, who said he holds no grudge against Flores, was traded as part of the Laremy Tunsil deal to Houston a week before the 2019 regular season. Within days of that deal, the Dolphins also traded safety Fitzpatrick, another player who disagreed with Flores.

Fitzpatrick was a 2018 first-round pick, the No. 11 selection in the draft. The Dolphins said Fitzpatrick worked hard, prepared diligently and played well on game days when they drafted him. And all of that proved true Fitzpatrick’s rookie year.

When Flores brought his system to the Dolphins he viewed Fitzpatrick as a strong safety playing mostly at the line of scrimmage, as Patrick Chung had done in New England for so long and as Eric Rowe is expected to do for Miami this year.

Fitzpatrick, no more than 205 pounds, believed that was a gross misuse of his skills. He made that clear to Flores. And Flores didn’t agree.

“We had a difference of opinion in my skill set and what he thought I could do,” Fitzpatrick told the Bleacher Report last month. “It was going to get tough for me to show something to somebody they were choosing not to see. They didn’t give me the opportunity to show it, even though I had film that showed it.

“The losing and all that stuff? If I was put in the right position and we’re losing — because of decisions people made upstairs — it is what it is. I can only control how I play. That didn’t affect me at all.

“It was just a fact that I was being used the wrong way. And we had a difference of opinion between myself and the head coach.”

Ultimately, a difference of opinion with the head coach was a losing battle, regardless of man’s status on the depth chart, salary cap, draft board or coaching staff.

Stills, an $8 million-per-year wide receiver, was traded.

Fitzpatrick, a first-round pick only one year earlier, was traded.

Alonso, a $7 million-per-year starting linebacker, was traded.

And offensive line coach Pat Flaherty, who didn’t wish to insert rookie-at-the-time Michael Deiter into the starting lineup early in camp, was fired after the first week of practice.

That doesn’t mean Flores was or is the proverbial bull in a China shop.

But he clearly has principles he believes in and isn’t eager to compromise on. That means he is staking his success and perhaps his career on certain things he’s just not going to change.

Interestingly, the man who sometimes stubbornly sticks by decisions even when they are questionable and fail — such as a cover zero blitz against the Pittsburgh Steelers on third-and-20 — also elegantly works to draw players in and make them believe in him as part of his approach.

That includes accomplished players who can help Flores win and some who aren’t as accomplished who won’t ever be part of any future success.

When unproven second-year player Kendrick Norton was involved in a car accident that resulted in the amputation of his left arm in July 2019, Flores showed up at the hospital to support him the very night of the accident and many times afterward — knowing Norton would never play for him.

When former University of Miami running back Mark Walton washed out with the Cincinnati Bengals after multiple off-field incidents, he was signed by the Dolphins in May of 2019. Flores liked Walton and made a point of supporting him and trying to save his career.

When Walton was suspended four games last fall, Flores would not waiver on his support. The Dolphins negotiated a contract extension agreement they intended Walton to sign once his suspension was over.

Walton was instead released because he was arrested on domestic battery charges two games into that four-game suspension. But the coach’s support of a troubled player resonated among some young players in the locker room.

Flores has also struck something of a kinship with some of the team’s new, older veterans. In fact, all the former New England Patriots who signed with the Dolphins this offseason have said their relationship with Flores was one of the chief reasons for making the move to Miami.

Linebacker Kyle Van Noy is among those. His relationship with Flores has been described as sometimes loving, sometimes heated, always ultimately respectful. How did that come to be?

Understanding. But also Van Noy doing as Flores asks.

Like the time in 2018 when Flores was insisting Van Noy and teammate Dont’a Hightower exert themselves in a practice rather than merely get through — especially while working on a particular play they might see in the next game.

“Look, we’re not just out here today, we’ve got work to do,” Flores implored during that Patriots practice.

“Then in that game, that week ... it came to a time and a place where the play that he wasn’t happy about in that practice popped up in the game,” Van Noy said, “and me and [Hightower] started laughing at each other because me and him both made a play on it.

“And we go to the sideline and we started laughing at him like, ‘Look, we’re not out here.’ We kind of did his little comment back to him, and he started laughing. That’s just a small story, but it’s a big story because he takes something that’s so small and is able to put it into football and relate to it, and he’s really good with his players.”

This story was originally published September 3, 2020 at 10:00 AM.

Armando Salguero

Miami Herald

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Armando Salguero has covered the Miami Dolphins and the NFL since 1990, so longer than many players on the current roster have been alive and since many coaches on the team were in middle school. He was a 2016 APSE Top 3 columnist nationwide. He is one of 48 Pro Football Hall of Fame voters. He is an Associated Press All-Pro and awards voter. He’s covered Dolphins games in London, Berlin, Mexico City and Tokyo. He has covered 25 Super Bowls, the NBA Finals, and the Olympics.