Despite mountains of evidence, Senior Bowl director Jim Nagy says racial bias doesn’t affect the scouting of Black quarterbacks.
I am blocked from seeing Jim Nagy’s tweets. I figured it was important to say that at the top to let you know that I might be a bit biased when evaluating his ability to run the Senior Bowl. You’ll understand why I felt the need to point that out in a bit.
Nagy was hired as the executive director of the annual showcase for NFL Draft prospects in 2018, and one of his roles is to pick the Senior Bowl roster every year. Considering how important the event can be for prospects, it’s not an insignificant task. In many ways, Nagy is a tastemaker for decision-makers around the league and a gatekeeper for prospects hoping to make the NFL. He can provide unheralded prospects with a platform to impress pro scouts and coaches. By the same token, he can deny prospects that platform.
Because of that, Nagy’s capacity to do his job should be under constant scrutiny. And a recent exchange with quarterback trainer Quincy Avery shows that he might not be equipped for the role.
On Thursday, Avery sent out a series of tweets pointing out how meteoric rises in draft stock never seem to happen for Black quarterbacks. That shouldn’t have been considered a controversial take, but Nagy felt the need to chime in with some scouts don’t see color nonsense.
Nagy is typically an awful tweeter and gets dunked on regularly. Some of his tweets are problematic.
Some are comically naive.
And some of them will make you question his competence.
This exchange with Avery is a combination of the three. The idea that Black quarterbacks aren’t under more scrutiny than their white counterparts is obviously laughable but Nagy’s inability to recognize how racial bias could influence the evaluation process is especially troubling.
Nagy is using a horribly cliched argument that has long been used to refute claims of racial bias in the NFL. He says the pressure to win outweighs any bias a person might hold. In his mind, NFL execs, coaches and scouts can’t afford to overlook a talented player. If they believe a player will help them win games, they’re not going to turn them away on the basis of race.
But that’s the thing about bias: It influences a person’s belief system. Nobody is saying these talent evaluators intentionally give Black quarterbacks lower marks simply because of their skin color. Their bias influences evaluations in a way they may not be able to perceive. And the only way to address the problem is by recognizing it.
It appears Nagy isn’t willing to do so. And never has been. Or, in his mind, has never needed to. In his own experience — RED FLAG! — “race never played a role in QB eval.” He said that directly before listing off all the racist criticisms Black quarterbacks tend to hear. Race is not a problem in quarterback evaluation but here all the stereotypes that are typically reserved for Black quarterbacks.
Maybe the most telling line from those tweets is Nagy saying that it’s people outside the NFL who “infuse race into it.” Yes, because it was NFL Twitter that allowed Lamar Jackson to drop to the 32nd pick in the draft after tearing up college football for two years. And it was NFL Twitter that asked him to work out as a receiver. And it was NFL Twitter that refused to hire more than three Black head coaches in a league made up of 80% Black players. I could go on…
Instead, I’ll end with this fact: During Nagy’s tenure, only five of the 19 Senior Bowl quarterbacks have been Black. Tyler Huntley, a first-team All-Pac 12 selection ahead of Justin Herbert, was not one of those quarterbacks. The Utah product, who is Black, went undrafted but ended up on the Ravens active roster for four games during his rookies season. Meanwhile, Shea Patterson and Anthony Gordon, two white quarterbacks who did not perform as well as Huntley in college but did receive a Senior Bowl invite, also went undrafted but both were unable to make a team this past season.
Did racial bias lead to Patterson and Gordon getting invites over the more accomplished Huntley? Probably, but I can’t say for sure. Neither can Nagy, but he’d almost certainly tell you it did not.
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