A recruiting firm assessing Brian Flores as a potential coaching candidate said he was “polished and a good presenter despite growing up in Brownsville, Brooklyn (same as Mike Tyson),” according to a memo unsealed Tuesday as part of the Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator’s discrimination lawsuit against the NFL and multiple teams.

The firm, Korn Ferry, produced the memo on Flores for the Las Vegas Raiders during their search for a head coach in 2024. Flores’ lawyers had previously called it “racist and retaliatory.”In the memo, Korn Ferry listed Flores’ strengths and weaknesses in two columns.

Under strengths, Korn Ferry praised how his schemes and blitzes confused opposing offenses and then included the reference to the neighborhood where Flores grew up, whose residents are predominantly Black or Hispanic. It added, “He was able to build a strong friendship with a billionaire’s son, which gave him opportunities to socialize and learn how to build relationships with white-collar and upper-class individuals.”

Under weaknesses, Korn Ferry wrote: “He can fool you with his polish upwards. Has little people skills, lacks self-awareness and can sometimes exhibit erratic behavior.”It also said he “can be a dictator with players, coaches, and can even be difficult with ownership” and called his personality “unpredictable.”

“Needs someone strong at the top to reign [sic] in some of his worst behavior. He once threatened violence to his GM and made irrational demands during an ownership meeting,” Korn Ferry wrote. “One long-time senior team executive said, ‘He may have changed since, but he was the worst hiring decision we’ve ever made.’ Another President of a club refused to talk about him.”Flores’ attorneys, Douglas H. Wigdor and Michael J. Willemin, echoed their earlier criticism of the memo in a statement Tuesday.

“The recently unsealed documents demonstrate two unfortunate, but unsurprising, realities,” the statement said. “First, that Mr. Flores’ decision to hold the league and its teams accountable for systemic race discrimination has been met with unlawful retaliation. Second, discrimination continues to play a significant role in the hiring process for NFL Head Coaches, as evidenced by the fact that the candidate profile prepared for the Raiders leans heavily on racial stereotypes. We and Mr. Flores are committed to eradicating the institutional racism and retaliation that permeates the league, its teams and their partners.”The contents of the memo were first reported by Front Office Sports. The NFL did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Flores, who is Black, has been in a legal battle with the NFL and multiple teams since 2022, when he sued over his belief that he was treated unfairly because of his race after his firing as the Miami Dolphins’ head coach. He alleged that the league remains “rife with racism, particularly when it comes to the hiring and retention of Black head coaches, coordinators and general managers.”The NFL appealed to have the case handled through its arbitration process rather than open court in New York, which was denied.

The NFL elevated its appeal to the Supreme Court after unsuccessful arbitration attempts in the lower courts. In 2023, a federal judge allowed some claims in Flores’ lawsuit to reach arbitration, while others — including those against the New York Giants, Denver Broncos and Houston Texans, all teams Flores interviewed with at some point — were to remain in court. In August 2025, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan upheld that ruling, which also determined that “related claims” against the NFL could proceed in court.

Since the suit’s inception, other coaches, including former Arizona Cardinals head coach Steve Wilks and Ray Horton, a former defensive coordinator for multiple NFL clubs, have joined as plaintiffs. Flores has worked as the Vikings’ defensive coordinator since 2023.

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The Dolphins fired Flores in January 2022 after the team went 24-25 in his three seasons. He sued the NFL and several teams one month later, accusing the Giants and Broncos of sham interviews to satisfy the league’s diversity requirements and alleging the Texans retaliated against him for filing the lawsuit.

In May, lawyers representing the NFL and several teams facing employment discrimination allegations sent a memo to a federal judge overseeing the case, accusing Flores’ team of filing “punishingly overbroad discovery requests,” including 24 years’ worth of hiring and employment documents from nearly every NFL team.

In the memo, lawyers called the document requests a delay tactic meant to interfere with the defendants’ motions to dismiss the case altogether. Flores’ attorneys argued the extensive documentation is necessary to prove his allegations that “systemic racial discrimination” plays a role in hiring and firing decisions throughout the league.

Flores filed an amended complaint on May 20, arguing that the head coach hiring process “is not a set of mere independent discretionary decisions by each team. Rather, the Head Coach hiring process operates within a closed and highly interconnected ecosystem.”