The NFL said it was unable to substantiate claims by former Cleveland Browns coach Hue Jackson that the team provided incentives as part...
The NFL said it was unable to substantiate claims by former Cleveland Browns coach Hue Jackson that the team provided incentives as part of a plan to deliberately lose games to improve his position in the draft in the years to come.
Former US attorney Mary Jo White led the league’s review of the claims, reviewing thousands of pages of documents including emails and internal memos related to the team’s four-year plan to revitalize the club, which overlapped Jackson’s two-year tenure as head coach in 2016 and 2017.
“The investigation found no evidence to suggest that the Browns four-year plan or club ownership or football staff sought to lose or induce losses and made no deliberate decisions to weaken the team to get a more favorable draft position,” the league said. in a report.
Jackson did not speak to White and other investigators as part of the review, the league said, but White’s team also reviewed documents and testimony from an earlier arbitration between Jackson and the Browns. White also interviewed Browns owner Jimmy Haslam as well as current and former members of the team.
Jackson did not return a call to comment on the league’s findings.
At the beginning of February, jackson said that he received bonuses that reached $750,000 as part of the team’s plan to lose games and improve the Browns’ standing in the following year’s draft. Under Jackson’s direction, the Browns won just one game in 2016 and none in 2017. He was fired after eight games in 2018, when the team record was 2-5-1.
Jackson made the statements just days after Brian Flores, who was recently fired as head coach of the Miami Dolphins, sued in federal court who alleged that other clubs had given him “mock interviews” for vacancies they knew they would give to white coaches. Flores’ lawsuit said the practice was part of league-wide discrimination against black coaches in their hiring practices.
In that filing, Flores also claimed that Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross offered to pay him $100,000 for every game he lost while he was the team’s head coach.
Ross denied the allegations.
On Monday, attorneys representing Flores and the two other black NFL coaches who joined the lawsuit, Ray Horton and Steve Wilks, appeared in federal court in New York for a pre-trial conference opposite attorneys defending the NFL, including Loretta Lynch, a former American. Attorney General.
Lynch and the NFL’s legal team argued that the plaintiffs’ claims should be sent to closed-door arbitration and have until June 21 to file a motion to compel arbitration. Flores’ lawyers are fighting to have the case tried in open court.
The plaintiffs also sought to begin a limited discovery of whether NFL commissioner Roger Goodell had any biases that should rule him out as a potential referee. They cited Goodell’s employment status — the 32 teams defending Flores’ claims determine and pay his salary — as well as the league’s statement immediately after the lawsuit was filed in which it said Flores’ claims were ” unfounded”.
The judge who heard the conference deferred a decision on whether this limited discovery can proceed until the NFL files its motion to compel. The plaintiffs will have until July 22 to respond to the league’s motion, but that deadline could be extended if they ask the judge to allow limited discovery around Goodell’s role.
Flores’ attorneys told the judge they would be willing to participate in a settlement conference, but the NFL declined, saying it was confident the arbitration process would be neutral.
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