Cowboys ‘firmly in play’ for Brian Flores after Matt Eberflus’ defensive disaster

Brian Flores could be on the move.

According to Pro Football Talk, the Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator — whose contract is set to expire at the end of the season — will have plenty of potential suitors, and the Cowboys will be “firmly in play” to hire Flores if they fire Matt Eberflus as expected.

The Vikings are trying to extend Flores, but if he got another head coaching opportunity, he would be free to leave.

Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores. AP

But that wouldn’t be the case if he was still under contract with Minnesota and another team wanted to hire him as defensive coordinator.

Eberflus, according to the site, is set to be canned after a rough season back in Dallas — a year that began with the trade of Micah Parsons to Green Bay.

Whether Dallas owner Jerry Jones would pay Flores would be another issue, as the site noted that ex-Jets head coach Rex Ryan said last year that he would have gotten the defensive coordinator job rather than Mike Zimmer under then-head coach Mike McCarthy if Jones had been willing to pay, but Jones, Ryan said, “couldn’t pony up the money.”

If Flores doesn’t sign an extension with the Vikings and hits free agency as arguably the top defensive coordinator in the NFL, he would almost certainly be in high demand and could command a rich contract.

Flores has been the Vikings’ defensive coordinator for the last three years, and Minnesota was said to want to extend his contract prior to this year, but Flores declined — and that decision could pay off.

And as NBC NFL analyst Chris Simms noted after the Vikings shut down the Detroit Lions and quarterback Jared Goff on Thursday, Flores “just put on an absolute clinic… How is [Flores] not a head coach?”

The 44-year-old Brooklyn native spent three years as head coach of the Miami Dolphins from 2019-21 and went 24-25, although the team finished above .500 in each of his final two seasons.

Cowboys defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus. Jerome Miron-Imagn Images

In 2022, Flores filed a class-action lawsuit against the NFL, as well as the Giants, Dolphins and Denver Broncos organizations, alleging racial discrimination.

The suit claimed that messages he received from Bill Belichick — still the head coach of the Patriots at the time — proved that the Giants had already made the decision to hire since-fired Brian Daboll as head coach prior to interviewing any minority coaches.