- The latest NFL head coach hiring cycle saw only one person of color hired and zero Black coaches.
- Commissioner Roger Goodell acknowledged the lack of progress despite league initiatives like the Rooney Rule.
- Brian Flores, who is suing the NFL for alleged racial discrimination, was again passed over for a head coaching position.
SAN JOSE, Calif. – Well, it sure felt like a quasi-holiday on Feb. 2 when Roger Goodell kicked off Super Bowl 60 week with his annual State of the NFL press conference.
You know the event – Groundhog Day. How fitting.
The NFL commissioner saw his shadow again when it came to the lack of diversity with the latest hiring cycle for head coaches. With 10 openings to be filled – the most since the 11 in 2000 – just one person of color was hired. Black coaches were shut out again, for the fifth time since 2023.
Goodell might feel like he’s stuck in a movie with Bill Murray, because the questions – and criticism – about the NFL’s head coaching hires keep coming back year after year.
Last year, just one Black head coach was hired among seven vacancies when Aaron Glenn landed the New York Jets job. This time, the Tennessee Titans hire of Robert Saleh, a Lebanese-American, was the only person of color to land a top job.
Never mind all that Goodell has done from his perch to promote more diverse results, including programs, initiatives, staunch support for the Rooney Rule and sermons from the pulpit. The past two cycles, Black coaches are 1-for-17 in landing the top jobs in a league where roughly 70% of the players are Black.
If he’s not in a movie, you could suspect the commissioner is resigned to the notion that whatever he tries, it won’t work.
“You know me too well to say I’m resigned to something where I think we need to continue to make progress,” Goodell said the first time the topic was broached during his 45-minute session at the San Jose Convention Center. “I believe that. I believe diversity is good for us.”
“We still have work to do,” he added. “There’s got to be more steps, so we’re re-evaluating everything we’re doing, including our accelerator program, to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow, rather than yesterday So, we need to be looking at that to say, ‘OK, why did we have the results this year?’ ”
Now haven’t we heard this before.
NFL owners keep hiring coaches who look like them. Goodell keeps taking the heat
No, the commissioner doesn’t make the hires. That’s on the individual teams and team owners. Yet Goodell’s big-money gig comes with the distinct feature of taking the heat on this matter for NFL owners. Like it or not, he’s the face of the league’s response – even though the onus is always on the owners.
In any event, Goodell is at least consistent with his messaging – even amid a sticky political climate where the Trump administration has waged war on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts – that maintains they’ll keep trying because there’s more work to do.
Still, it may be more than a coincidence that in the first hiring cycle since the NFL punted (or scrapped) its accelerator program, which was designed to improve prospects for minority coaching and front office candidates – the key features including exposure to team owners and workshop sessions – zero Black head coaches were hired.
Why did the NFL scrap (or punt) the accelerator program? It reeked of a political dance.
Now that the results are in, Goodell insists there was no correlation between the results of zero Black coaching hires and zero accelerator programs since May.
“No,” Goodell said, “but I think long term, it’s something that we want to continue and figure out how do we use that to make sure that people understand that the level of talent is out there, the extraordinary talent is out there and how to give them the opportunities to continue their careers.”
The league has stated that it intends to eventually bring back the accelerator in a reimagined form. Yet I’d suspect that it will be a challenge to avoid anti-DEI pushback if the program isn’t expanded beyond minorities and women. We’ll see.
Brian Flores, Eric Bieniemy personify NFL’s lingering diversity issues
In the meantime, other indicators underscore the challenge for advancing Black coaches to the top posts. When Eric Bieniemy returned to the Kansas City Chiefs last month, he snapped a string that saw more than 30 offensive coordinator jobs filled by White candidates.
Most head coaching jobs are filled by offensive coordinators – although Bieniemy was a notable exception to that pattern despite his Super Bowl success with the Chiefs.
It’s also worth nothing that neither of the head coaches for the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots meeting in Super Bowl 60 – Mike Macdonald and Mike Vrabel – were hot offensive coordinators. They both have defensive backgrounds.
Speaking of such, arguably the most attractive Black head coaching candidate during the most recent cycle came from the defensive side, too. But Brian Flores, the Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator, was passed over again.
Flores seemingly has three strikes against him: One, he’s Black. Two, he has a defensive background. And three, he’s suing the NFL on the grounds of systemic racism, alleging that three teams – the Houston Texans, Denver Broncos and New York Giants – conducted sham interviews with him to comply with the Rooney Rule as he pursued a job after being fired by the Miami Dolphins.
It’s not hard to imagine that Flores’ pending legal action might have been a factor in his being passed over, despite landing interviews with the Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers.
The class action suit, filed four years ago, still doesn’t have a trial date. It has stalled in the legal system, with the league petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a lower court ruling and force Flores into arbitration – where Goodell could potentially rule on the dispute.
Goodell wouldn’t delve deeply into the matter on Feb. 2, which was not surprising given the legal ramifications. Yet he doubled down on the “responsibility,” as he put it, for him to maintain the power to settle arbitration cases.
“It is part of the commissioner’s role, has been and continues to be, and is an important element in giving resolution to issues so that we can move forward without unnecessary litigation,” Goodell said. “So, beyond that, it’s all left up to the lawyers to go from there.”
Still, the optics of Flores’ case could strike to the heart of frustration for Black coaches: Something’s just not right.
Goodell pushed back on a question about the perception of Rooney Rule interviews, yet the tone of the question came from the same place as Flores’ suit.
“I think the rule has been seen as a positive by our clubs by giving them an opportunity to look at a diverse set of candidates,” Goodell said. “They make the choice, ultimately, but I think it’s shown them the value of looking at talent where you might not know what you may not see … Teams are trying to get the coach they think they can win with.”
As Goodell noted, there were 10 openings for current cycle, the inference being that more openings are coming in time.
Left unsaid, though, was the prospect of another Groundhog Day.
Contact Jarrett Bell at jbell@usatoday.com or follow on X: @JarrettBell
