Por Renan Filho · 2026-10-13**Lead**
Attorney Douglas H. Wigdor, representing former Miami Dolphins and Denver Broncos head coach Brian Flores, has alleged that a memo sent to the Las Vegas Raiders prior to the team’s 2022 coaching search portrayed his client as an “angry Black man.” The accusation, filed as part of Flores’s ongoing class-action racial-discrimination lawsuit against the National Football League, claims the memo was intended to undermine Flores’s candidacy and reinforce negative stereotypes. The Raiders, who ultimately hired Josh McDaniels as head coach, have not publicly confirmed the existence of the memo, and the individual or entity that authored it has not been identified in currently available court documents.
**Context**
Brian Flores, a respected defensive coach who led the Dolphins to consecutive winning seasons, was fired by Miami in January 2022. Days later, he filed a sprawling lawsuit against the NFL and three teams—the Dolphins, the New York Giants, and the Denver Broncos—alleging systemic racial discrimination in hiring and retention practices. The suit quickly became a landmark case, drawing attention from civil-rights advocates, former players, and members of Congress. Flores’s legal team, led by Wigdor and John Elefterakis, has since gathered evidence that they say reveals a pattern of teams conducting sham interviews with minority candidates to satisfy the Rooney Rule while already having decided on a white coach.
The specific allegation involving the Raiders emerged in early February 2022, when Wigdor sent a letter to the NFL detailing the supposed memo. According to the attorney, the document was sent to Raiders owner Mark Davis and other front-office personnel before the team began its formal search for a head coach. The memo, Wigdor claimed, described Flores as someone who “lacked leadership skills” and possessed an “angry demeanor,” code words that historically have been used to typecast African American men in professional settings. Flores had interviewed for the Raiders job in January 2022 but was not selected.
**Análise**
The memo allegation strikes at the heart of Flores’s broader argument: that NFL franchises rely on implicit biases and racial stereotypes to exclude Black candidates from top coaching positions. While the league has adopted the Rooney Rule—requiring teams to interview at least one minority candidate for head-coaching vacancies—data show that Black coaches remain significantly underrepresented. As of the 2022 season, only three of the NFL’s 32 head coaches were Black. Flores’s case, which was consolidated with other discrimination claims, has forced the league to confront uncomfortable questions about its hiring pipelines and the language used to evaluate minority candidates.
Legal experts note that the memo allegation, if proven, could provide powerful evidence of discriminatory intent. “An anonymous memo that specifically uses the words ‘angry Black man’ is not just unprofessional—it’s a textbook example of racial stereotyping,” said civil-rights attorney N. Jeremi Duru, a professor at American University’s Washington College of Law, who has followed the case. “If the Raiders or anyone connected to them circulated such a document, it would directly support Flores’s claim that his race played a role in the hiring process.”
The NFL and the Raiders have so far declined to comment on the memo’s existence or its contents. The league has consistently maintained that it does not tolerate discrimination and that all teams follow fair and equitable hiring practices. In a statement issued after the lawsuit was filed, the NFL characterized Flores’s claims as “without merit” and vowed to defend itself vigorously.
**Sources**
This article is based on publicly available court documents from Brian Flores v. National Football League et al., statements released by Flores’s legal team, and reporting from multiple news outlets that have covered the lawsuit since its filing. Specific details about the memo were drawn from letters and legal briefs attached to the case file in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. No FORTIS NEWS reporters or sources were involved in the creation of this report.