As we head into a 2020 offseason in which about 70% of the NFL’s players are black, and the NFL itself is celebrating a 100th anniversary that is filled with all kinds of racial inequality, the current state of black head coaching candidates, and other candidates of color, should be a much bigger concern than it is. How did we get here, and why does the NFL fail to find a solution to what seems to be a simple problem of excellence and equality?
Black Monday
At the end of the 2018 regular season, the usual number of eight NFL head coaches found themselves on the wrong side of the employment curve. But that rash of firings was unique in that it almost completely cleared the league of its black head coaches.
Cleveland’s Hue Jackson, Cincinnati’s Marvin Lewis, Arizona’s Steve Wilks, Denver’s Vance Joseph, and Todd Bowles of the Jets were all cashiered in or after the 2018 season, pushing the total of black head coaches to two — Anthony Lynn of the Chargers, and Mike Tomlin of the Steelers. The Dolphins replaced Adam Gase with former Patriots linebackers coach/defensive coordinator Brian Flores, which put the number at three.
Now, it could be argued at the time that the firings were legitimate. Lewis had 16 years to make the Bengals successful, and by most standards, he didn’t do enough. Jackson deserved to be fired, and he probably should take some time to assess his shortcomings before he gets another shot. Wilks, Joseph, and Bowles were in the wind because they didn’t have enough of a voice in the vision. They didn’t have a real stake in the game, and when it was time to place blame, they were the easy marks.
Of the available head coaching opportunities after the carnage following the 2019 regular season, only one minority candidate was hired, and that was Ron Rivera by the Washington Redskins, after he was fired by the Carolina Panthers. Rivera’s replacement is former Baylor head coach Matt Rhule, who received a seven-year, $60 million contract that could reach $70 million with incentives. Rhule, who was also high on the Giants’ list before Panthers owner David Tepper priced everybody else out of the building, has exactly one season of NFL experience — as the Giants’ assistant offensive line coach in 2012. That’s not to say Rhule won’t be successful in his new position, but it does beg the question: Why were the Panthers not interested in monority candidates with far more NFL experience?
The Giants were okay with Rhule landing with Tepper because they were on the track of former Patriots special-teams coordinator and receivers coach Joe Judge. While Judge does have eight seasons of experience under Bill Belichick in Foxborough, and three more seasons with Nick Saban at Alabama, that doesn’t make the complete lack of minority interviews or interests any less glaring.
Now, the only head coaching position left is in Cleveland, after the Browns fired Freddie Kitchens, who got the job following a 2018 season in which he excelled as the team’s offensive coordinator over half a season. Kitchens’ tenure as a head coach was defined by an overall lack of discipline and unity, and one of the highest penalty rates in the league. To date, the Browns have not expressed interest in a single minority candidate; they are currently on the hook to interview Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, Vikings offensive coordinator Kevin Stefanski, and Eagles defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz.
The buzz around McDaniels and Stefanski raises an interesting question about the fate of Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy. Bieniemy’s two predecessors, Doug Pederson and Matt Nagy, each found themselves with head coaching opportunities with the Eagles and Bears, respectively, after successful runs under Andy Reid. But Bieniemy is going oddly overlooked in this process, and it’s certainly not because teams would get an off-putting reference from Reid. The Giants did request permission to interview Bieniemy, at which point Reid made his feelings public.
“You guys know how I feel about Eric,” Reid told reporters on December 31. “I think he would be tremendous. I don’t know the team, but there is a team out there that could really use him. Being the leader of men that he is, you’re not going to find people better than that in that category. He’s a sharp offensive mind on top of that.
“I’m a big fan. Don’t want to lose him, but reality is that there is a good chance that happens.”
Well, perhaps not.
The ongoing struggle
According to a recent study conducted by the Global Sport Institute at Arizona State University along with the Paul Robeson Research Center for Innovative Academic & Athletic Prowess at the University of Central Florida College of Business, and revealed publicly by Martenzie Johnson of The Undefeated, black coaches have long struggled to find the same opportunities their white colleagues receive, regardless of experience or success.
The study showed that the primary path to a head coaching position in the NFL is through the role of offensive coordinator. Since 2009, nearly 40% of head coaches hired were former offensive coordinators and at least 77% of those offensive coordinators each season were white. During the 2010, 2011 and 2016 hiring seasons, every newly hired offensive coordinator was white; and since 2009, 91% of offensive coordinator hires have been white. At this time, Bienemy and Tampa Bay’s Byron Leftwich are the NFL’s only black offensive coordinators.
The study also showed that that after leaving a position, 14% of white coaches were hired as head coaches again the following season compared with just 7% of minority coaches. Hue Jackson, who has been the Raiders’ and Browns’ head coach, was the only example of a black head coach doing it. Meanwhile, the NFL has re-hired Mike Mularkey (twice), John Fox (twice), Chip Kelly, Adam Gase, Pat Shurmur, Bruce Arians, Doug Marrone, and Mike McCarthy. McCarthy took a year off between his firing from the Packers and his Cowboys hire, though had he made himself available sooner, there’s little doubt he would have received an opportunity or two. Or three.
Marvin Lewis doesn’t have an NFL job; he spent the 2019 season as a special advisor to Herm Edwards at Arizona State. Vance Joseph is the Cardinals’ defensive coordinator. Bowles has that same title in Tampa Bay, where he engineered a remarkable single-season turnaround. The Buccaneers went from 32nd in Defensive DVOA to fifth on his watch.
There’s no way to know whether any of them will get another opportunity to succeed as a head coach after previous “failures.” There’s no way to know whether they’ll be able to rebuild their head coaching resumes after instances in which things didn’t work out, as coaches like Belichick, Reid, and Pete Carroll have.
There’s no way to know whether current Dolphins assistant head coach and quarterbacks coach Jim Caldwell will ever get another opportunity. The Lions fired Caldwell after three seasons in which he had a regular-season record of 36-28. Ex-Patriots defensive coordinator Matt Patricia followed Caldwell, and has a 9-22-1 record in two seasons. Caldwell designed the offense that helped the 2012 Baltimore Ravens win Super Bowl XLVII. He led the Colts to 24 wins and just eight losses in his first two seasons as the Colts’ head coach in 2009 and 2010; he was let go after a 2011 season in which Peyton Manning’s injuries left the team with Curtis Painter, Dan Orlovsky, and Kerry Collins as its quarterbacks, and a defense that was among the league’s worst.
Caldwell, to our knowledge, has not received any interest in a third opportunity.
A rule is not enough
The Rooney Rule, which the NFL established in 2002 after civil rights attorneys Cyrus Mehri and Johnnie Cochran released a study stating that black head coaches, despite winning a higher percentage of games, were less likely to be hired and more likely to be fired than their white counterparts, is not an effective enough gatekeeper to stop this problem. Insisting that teams interview a minority candidate before hiring their preferred candidate has always been an insult to both the teams and the minority candidates. Sham interviews are no good to anybody, and there’s little evidence that Rooney Rule interviews have led to head coaching opportunities.
Not to mention the fact that when the Detroit Lions were found to be in violation of the Rooney Rule in 2003 by hiring Steve Mariucci without interviewing any minority candidates, all the NFL did was to fine team president Matt Millen $200,000. Not exactly an object lesson.
The obvious solution is to have more people of color in decision-making roles, though Newsome — who ran the Ravens from 1996 through 2018 and is unquestionably the most successful black executive in NFL history — never hired a black head coach. Not that he should have had to. Baltimore has had three head coaches in its history — Ted Marchibroda, Brian Billick, and John Harbaugh. Billick and Harbaugh each won Super Bowls, and Harbaugh has the NFL’s best team this season.
The only black general manager/head coach combination in the NFL at this point is happening in Miami, where GM Chris Grier and head coach Brian Flores are trying to rebuild a broken Dolphins franchise after years of coaching malfeasance and weird personnel decisions. It’s sad to say that Grier and Flores are not only unique in their current pairing, but also may have the most severe uphill climb.
Creating the right fight
What’s the real solution? To hold those in power accountable. No progressive action in NFL history has come about though anything other than the threat of legal action, or the revocation of stadium privileges. The latter forced the 1946 Los Angeles Rams to finally look at talented UCLA players like Kenny Washington and end the ban on black players that the NFL had held since the 1934 season. The Rams had moved from Cleveland, and they were told in a meeting with the Coliseum Commission to decide the Rams’ tenancy at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum that it would be in their best interests to break the ban.
And in the early 1960s, when Redskins owner George Preston Marshall refused to have his team become the last to integrate, Stewart L. Udall, John F. Kennedy’s Secretary of the Interior, pressed Marshall with the idea than an organization which practiced discrimination would not be allowed to use District of Columbia Stadium, which was named after Robert F. Kennedy following Kennedy’s 1968 assassination. Marshall had no choice but to bend.
The pressure from multiple parties that forced the NFL to institute the Rooney Rule is but another example, and that same kind of pressure needs to be brought to bear again — through awareness, activism, and whatever leverage cities and governments may have when it comes time for public money to be used in the construction and renovation of stadiums and training facilities.
The idea is not to create a quota or a requirement on either side. The idea should never be to gift unfair advantage to one party or another. The idea should be for the best candidates to get the best opportunities, and in today’s NFL, that simply isn’t happening. It especially isn’t happening since the axe fell on so many black coaches during and after the 2018 season.
Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar previously covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”
