Where does Brian Flores rank among NFL head coaches entering 2021?
It has been a long time since a Miami Dolphins head coach was entering into their third season and generally considered to be one of the upper tiered coaches in all of football. Some coaches, such as Nick Saban and Cam Cameron, never even made it to a third year in Miami. Other coaches, like Joe Philbin and Adam Gase, saw their teams regress by Year 3. Whether or not the Dolphins endure a regression in the win column in Brian Flores’ third year or not is still yet to be determined. But there’s little question that Flores enters his third year as the head coach in Miami with a better standing than any Dolphins coach in recent memory.
Dave Wannstedt, who had three consecutive winning seasons to open his tenure in Miami, is probably the latest coach to claim better status at this juncture in their tenure with the team.
But how does Flores stack against the rest of the NFL in the year 2021? That depends on who you ask. But Mike Tagliere of Fantasy Pros sees Flores as a top-12 coach in all of football — with the mobility to move even further up the charts.
Here's a snapshot look at @MikeTagliereNFL's head coach rankings for the 2021 #NFL season; which ranking do you disagree with most? pic.twitter.com/unK7lmTVBs
— FantasyPros (@FantasyPros) May 27, 2021
“12. Brian Flores (Miami Dolphins)
I kind of love what Flores is doing in Miami, completely turning the franchise around. My favorite part is that he’s holding players accountable. Minkah Fitzpatrick doesn’t want to cooperate? Trade him. Our first-round pick Tua Tagovailoa is playing poorly? Bench him. He doesn’t seem to care about anything other than what they’re doing to help the team, and that’s a good thing. When he took this team over in 2019, it was a reclamation project, but one he quickly turned into a 10-6 contender. Another step in the right direction and he’ll be inside the top-10 coaches next year.” — Mike Tagliere, Fantasy Pros
Getting the coaching right in Miami was a major part of the team’s struggles over the last 15 years — but if the Dolphins have indeed got the right man for the job in Flores, and it appears they have, perhaps the rest of the success they’ve been searching for will soon follow suit. 2021 will be a big test for Flores to differentiate himself from the hopes instilled by other Dolphins coaches during this drought of success.
The good news? We like Flores’ chances. And so, too, does Mike Tagliere.
