During and right after the 2018 regular season, five NFL teams fired their Black head coaches. There was Hue Jackson of the Browns, Marvin Lewis of the Bengals, Steve Wilks of the Cardinals, Todd Bowles of the Jets, and Vance Joseph of the Broncos. All five of those coaches were replaced by white candidates — Gregg Williams (interim) and Freddie Kitchens for the Browns, Zac Taylor for the Bengals, Kliff Kingsbury for the Cardinals, Adam Gase (ouch) for the Jets, and Vic Fangio for the Broncos.
That bloodletting left two Black head coaches in the NFL — Mike Tomlin with the Steelers, and Anthony Lynn with the Chargers. Lynn was fired in January, 2021 and replaced by former Rams defensive coordinator Brandon Staley — another white candidate.
Now, after the somewhat surprising firing of former Dolphins head coach Brian Flores on Monday (the former Patriots linebackers coach and de facto defensive coordinator was hired by Miami in 2019), there are exactly two Black head coaches in the NFL — Tomlin, and David Culley of the Texans. Culley was brought in this season to calmly oversee an absolute disaster of a franchise, and his fate after a 4-13 record remains to be seen. If Culley is fired this week, and no Black coaches are hired to replace the head coaches who got their walking papers this season, that would leave just one Black head coach in the NFL.
And that, at a time when NFL rosters have been primarily Black for decades, and the league is falling all over itself to be portrayed as a positive force for social change, is completely unacceptable.
Why is this even more of a problem than it has ever been before?