Brian Flores needs to brace for an all-out legal,…

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With former Dolphins coach Brian Flores suing the NFL and at least three of its teams, plenty of things could happen. There’s one thing that definitely will unfold. The NFL and the teams he has sued will do anything and everything they can to make Flores look bad.

That’s how it works when someone takes on a big company in court. They hire a law firm who will look for anything in the background of the plaintiff that could be used to make the plaintiff look bad — and also to make the plaintiff regret the decision to sue.

They’ll work the litigation process to search for documents and testimony. They’ll find friendly ears (and mouthpieces) in the media to spread B.S. narratives, like they did with Colin Kaepernick.

It’ll happen. You’ll hear that Flores was too “prickly.” That he went through too many assistants. That he wasn’t that good of a coach. That players didn’t like him. That he really didn’t want to coach anymore, anyway.

That’s the game. That’s the playbook. I’ve handled these case from both sides. And when I met with a potential client for the first time, I’d ask the person to ask himself or herself two questions. First, what’s the worst thing you ever said or did? Two, are you comfortable having that come to light through this litigation? Whenever the answer to the second question was “no,” I’d decline to take the case.

They’ll do it. They always do it. It’s one thing for big companies to have to defend their own behavior. It’s another thing to turn the tables on the plaintiff.

How is any of that relevant? Lawyers are smart and creative when it comes to making irrelevant facts relevant. For example, if they can find something that the plaintiff did before coming to work for the defendant, they’ll try to argue that this “after-acquired evidence” justifies the termination. Or if, as in this case, the plaintiff seeks compensation for “mental anguish,” the defendant has license to explore all other sources of potential mental anguish in the plaintiff’s life, from marital issues to personal challenges to anything else that could be responsible for mental anguish other than alleged discrimination or improper treatment.

It won’t be pleasant for Flores. The goal of the lawyers will be to make it unpleasant. Sufficiently unpleasant so that, eventually, Flores will want it all to be over with, and that he’ll take a settlement instead of taking the case to open court.