With new hires Raheem Morris, Dave Canales Jerod Mayo and Antonio Pierce — and two openings yet to be filled — the NFL has now a record nine coaches of color entering the 2024 season. That list includes Houston's DeMeco Ryans, Pittsburgh's Mike Tomlin, Tampa Bay's Todd Bowles, Miami's Mike McDaniel and the New York Jets' Robert Saleh.
The NFL talks a good game, a much better game than it plays.
While, as my dad used to say, “It won’t hurt none,” meaningless gestures like printing “End Racism” in the back of end zones accomplishes nothing.
(Side note: I briefly thought racism was over, when the message wasn’t in the end zone at NRG Stadium for a couple of games this season.)
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With their reluctance to hire minority coaches, and specifically Black coaches, NFL owners have shown that many of them are out of touch with their own game, and the players who make the game.
But there is progress.
This hiring cycle has been historic. We shouldn’t have to talk about it, but we can’t ignore history.
With two hires yet to be made — the Seattle Seahawks and the Washington Commanders — the NFL already has a record nine coaches of color set for the 2024 season, thanks to new hires Raheem Morris (Atlanta), Jerod Mayo (New England), Antonio Pierce (Las Vegas) and Dave Canales (Carolina).
The coaches’ group photo, which is taken every year at an NFL owners' meeting, never looks like any team picture. Nearly 70 percent of the league’s players are minorities, and just under 57 percent are Black.
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After having only three Black coaches in each of the last five seasons, the NFL will have twice as many next season.
The Texans are well ahead of the curve, pacesetters even, having had four consecutive Black coaches (one was an interim for 12 games).
Thanks to the hiring of David Culley, Lovie Smith and now DeMeco Ryans, no NFL teams has had more Black coaches than the Texans, the youngest team in the league at 22 years old.
Don’t call the Texans progressive. The organization simply hired who the powers that be believed would the best person for the job at the time.
You know, the way it should be?
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This isn’t about a political agenda or ideology, though it does go against a traditionalist’s view. But the tradition of almost exclusively hiring white coaches comes from a dark place in our history.
That is how the NFL went several generations, a lifetime — from 1921 to 1989, from Fritz Pollard to Art Shell — without any team choosing to hire a Black man as a head coach.
For the better part of a century, to borrow from Al Campanis, a host of professional football owners did not believe Black men had “some of the necessities” required to coach their football teams.
At the top of that list of necessities? A lack of melanin.
Thankfully, we are moving past that. And it is glorious.
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No quota is needed. It’ll be obvious when the opportunity is fair.
The number of Black coaches in the NBA has never come close to the percentage of Black players in the league, but we no longer have this discussion about the NBA because the opportunity is fair.
Al Attles of the Golden State Warriors and K. C. Jones of the Washington Bullets (now Wizards) were the first Black coaches to face each other in a major U.S. pro sport with a championship at stake. At the time, only three of the 18 coaches in the league were Black.
That was in 1975, more than 30 years before Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith led their teams to the Super Bowl.
Despite the NFL’s 22-year head start in formation, the NBA has had four times as many Black coaches. Black coaches lead half the league’s teams.
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Some are crediting Ryans with pushing NFL owners to open the door for coaches they otherwise would not have considered.
That Ryans is great coach — yes, already — and led his team with a rookie quarterback to a playoff victory shouldn’t be why owners are more open to hiring Black coaches.
All three teams led by Black coaches advanced to the playoffs this year, as did the Dolphins, whose head coach Mike McDaniel identifies as multiracial.
That shouldn’t matter.
Every coach is different, brings individual experience, ability, and personality. Let’s not let skin tone define them. Give deserving coaches a chance.
The NFL is finally heading in the right direction, with teams casting a wider net than ever in searching for the right coach.
Tony Dungy spent 15 years as a highly regarded assistant, nine as a coordinator, before getting a head coaching nod. Ryans became the Texans’ head coach after just six years as an assistant and one as a coordinator.
There used to be a time when there wasn’t even an interview for the position, the owner just hired someone. Others would have a cursory interview or two, then hire the guy they wanted to hire anyway.
That is rarer these days, even with the misuse of the Rooney Rule.
The Falcons interviewed a whopping 14 candidates, which has to be a record, before hiring Morris, who led Tampa Bay for three years in the early 2010s and spent six years on the Atlanta sideline as an assistant.
Amazing that it wasn’t until recently that owners were open to opening up the interviewing process.
For all of you who are thinking, “There is too much talk about race in hiring NFL coaches,” you’re right.
“What is happening is it is becoming more mainstream,” former NFL head coach Ron Rivera told the Associated Press this week. “There are enough good coaches now where we can start saying, 'Hey, let’s just call everybody a head coach, not necessarily minority head coach.'”
The owners have slowly moved in a direction that will eliminate this talk, these columns.
Hey, maybe they have been influenced by what was printed in the end zone each week.
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