There is someone out there with longstanding ties to the glory days of the Giants, someone who is an NFL lifer and actually was called in this past season to help Joe Judge sort out the sorry state of the offensive line.
That someone also has significant ties to Brian Flores, who is under serious consideration as the next head coach of the Giants. That someone was once hired by Flores and, well, from the looks of how that went down, that someone figures to have plenty of bitter and negative things to say about the former Dolphins coach.
That someone is Pat Flaherty, and what he says reveals much about his magnanimity and might help the Giants sort through the good and the bad with Flores as they weigh hiring him or Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll.
“I don’t have anything negative to say about Brian Flores,’’ Flaherty told The Post, before quickly adding “I probably did in 2019.’’
Ah yes, 2019. Flaherty, now 65, had already completed an overwhelmingly-successful 12-year run with the Giants, spanning Tom Coughlin’s entire coaching tenure — guys like Shaun O’Hara, Rich Seubert and Chris Snee cannot say enough good things about him. Flaherty also served as the offensive line coach with the 49ers and Jaguars.
Back to 2019, a longtime coaching acquaintance, Freddie Kitchens, got the head coach job with the Browns and wanted to talk to Flaherty about joining his staff as the offensive line coach. Out of the blue, Flaherty received a call from Flores, just hired by the Dolphins. That same day, Flaherty was in Buffalo to meet with Sean McDermott and also Daboll, the offensive coordinator. Flaherty recalls he was “very impressed’’ with Daboll.
“I really felt comfortable up there,’’ Flaherty said of his visit with the Bills. “I made the decision and I don’t regret it because it doesn’t do any good to regret, right?’’
Flaherty did not really know Flores and said “Brian kinda recruited me to be his offensive line coach.’’ Flaherty felt good about it, especially because Jim Caldwell was just hired by Flores as the assistant head coach and quarterbacks coach. For six seasons, Flaherty worked for Caldwell at Wake Forest. Plus, Flores at the time also hired Flaherty’s son, Shawn, as a coaching assistant.
In the spring of 2019, Caldwell took a leave of absence for medical reasons. Flaherty went to his first training camp with Flores and the Dolphins.
“He was a first-time head coach,’’ Flaherty said, “and we didn’t have a very good offensive line.’’
Every day, Flaherty said, he would sit in the office of general manager Chris Grier and they would go over the offensive line depth chart and try to find help from outside the organization.
“I didn’t really sense anything,’’ Flaherty said. “We had a first-time offensive coordinator [Chad O’Shea], didn’t sense anything with him.’’
The Dolphins had two full-pads practices, followed by a day off for the players. It was four days into camp and Flaherty remembers the exact date: July 31, 8 o’clock in the morning.
“He called me in and said ‘I’m gonna make a change, I’m gonna have Guge coach the offensive line, I’m gonna let you go,’’’ Flaherty recalled.
Dave DeGuglielmo, hired by Flores as a consultant — the two had worked together with the Patriots — replaced Flaherty. Just like that.
“I said ‘Brian, you don’t need to do this,’ ’’ Flaherty recounted. “I said ‘What do you want me to do different?’ I’ve always been a head coach first, coordinator second type of guy.
“He said ‘Ah, it’s nothing you’re doing, it’s in my gut.’’’
That was it.
“I was teed off for a long time,’’ Flaherty said. “This is what I told Brian, I built all this time building up my reputation and a flick of his fingers he’s taking that rug out from under me. For what reason?
“Now, when it happened you don’t know why, did I do something? I went back for a year and re-lived every day and there was nothing that I could put my finger on. So it was just him and his gut feeling that he wanted to Guge to coach the offensive line, and the best one is, at the end of the year he didn’t keep him.’’
One year later, another member of the Bill Belichick coaching tree, former Giants head coach Joe Judge, fired his offensive line coach, Marc Colombo, mid-season after a verbal altercation. He replaced him with DeGuglielmo, brought in by Judge as a consultant.
“Is it the New England way? I don’t know,’’ Flaherty said.
If there was no expectation for Flaherty to adopt the Patriots’ way of doing things, why did Flores hire him without really knowing him?
“I was ready to go to another spot and he convinced me to go to Miami. He was convincing,’ Flaherty said.
Time has healed some of the wounds. Flaherty recalled that Flores was good to his son Shawn, who was promoted in 2021 to assistant offensive line coach. The Giants, Flaherty said, have not asked him what he thinks of Flores.
If they did, the guy who was summarily fired by Flores would not have given him a scathing review.
“Here’s what I would tell them,’’ Flaherty said. “I was there when Brian was a first-time head coach. I don’t compare people but I was with Jim Caldwell when he was a first-time head coach at Wake Forest and I saw the growth with Jim every year. I worked for him for six years and I saw him get better and better and better. He had a different demeanor than Brian, maybe because he was an offensive coach. Brian was rough around the edges with the staff and I think some of it was because he was a defensive coordinator and they learn to hate offensive people. It wasn’t anything that shocked me.
“I’ve been in it long enough to know and I thought he was gonna get better every day. Now, I wasn’t with him but I think it turned out that he did because they won. The guy was a successful coach the last two years. He’s proven that he can win.’’
If Flores gets the Giants’ job, he will need to assemble a staff. It is highly unlikely he would reach out to Flaherty but if he did, Flaherty said he would certainly consider going back to work for someone who three years earlier gave him the boot.
“Let bygones be bygones,’’ Flaherty said. “Once a Giant, always a Giant. Put that in there.’’
