On Tuesday, the NFL brought the hammer down on the Miami Dolphins and punished them for some of the charges levied by former head coach, Brian Flores, in the federal lawsuit he filed against the team this past February.
For violating league policies governing the integrity of the game, the league announced the following punishments:
The team was stripped of their 2023 first-round draft pick and a third-round selection in 2024.
Dolphins’ owner Stephen Ross was suspended through October 17th, removed from all NFL committees and fined $1.5 million.
Bruce Beal, the Dolphins’ vice chairman and owner-in-waiting, was banned from league meetings for the remainder of the 2022 season and fined $500,000.
The punishments stemmed from Flores’ claims that Ross offered financial rewards for losing games in 2019 in order to improve the team’s draft position, and for improper contact with Tom Brady, Sean Payton and Payton’s agent, Don Yee.
In its ruling, which came after an investigation led by former US attorney Mary Jo White, the NFL ripped Ross and Beal for their improper contact with the three aforementioned individuals, citing “tampering violations of unprecedented scope and severity.”
While the investigation didn’t turn up concrete evidence of Ross offering Flores $100,000 to purposely lose games, White and the NFL did determine that Ross at least hinted at prioritizing draft picks over wins in 2019.
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