Black coaches shut out of NFL hiring cycle says it all about team owners

SAN JOSE, Calif. — When NFL commissioner Roger Goodell faces the media on Monday, he will be bombarded with questions about the league’s integrity and commitment to fair play.

Last week, the NFL’s worst nightmare — bad publicity — was realized when news broke that connected New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. According to emails that were among more than 3 million documents released by the Department of Justice, the name of Tisch came up.

While Goodell will address this explosive development, he will also be asked about another vexing issue, one that strikes at the heart of the NFL’s ongoing conflicted relationship with African Americans. In the recent hiring cycle, a record 10 head coaching vacancies were created. None was filled by an African American head coach.

At a time when the Trump administration has declared war on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), NFL owners — most of whom donate money largely to the Republican Party — seem to be making a statement. No longer compelled to cast a wide net to find the best candidate, the owners seem committed to whitening the head coaching ranks and making sure those ranks stay white for the near future.

In previous cycles, Black candidates may have been beaten out by defensive coordinators or offensive coordinators or young white coaches or retreads. This time they were beaten out by a combination of them all — retreads, nepotism hires and everything in between. The message seemed to be “we’re hiring anything but Black head coaches.”

“It’s certainly been frustrating for this type of outcome,” Rod Graves, the executive director of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, told Andscape. “Very disappointing to have 10 positions open and no Black head coach, and only one minority. It doesn’t say a lot for where we are right now.”

In fact, it says everything. Diversity, equity and inclusion have been at the core of the NFL’s rise from a sandlot league to an economic behemoth and a cultural pillar of American society. The league once banned Black players as part of a gentleman’s agreement. Now the league is powered by Black bodies — on the field.

Team owners have managed to stop that dominance from being reflected in coaching and front-office ranks. NFL owners who refuse to diversify in their hiring practices will continue to fail to achieve sustainable success. And each year, the incompetence is reflected in these firings and the willingness of owners to absorb the salaries of dismissed personnel. Between 2017-2022, the league informed NFL teams they had spent about $800 million on coaches and executives who were no longer employed.

The problem is that there are no consequences for mismanagement and blunders.

Ineptitude is rewarded because teams make money regardless of mistakes. They are propped up by an economic system that pours millions of dollars into their coffers whether they win or not. Losing teams essentially “fail up” by receiving the highest picks in the draft order and continue to receive millions from the league in television and other revenue.

On the plus side of a dreary outcome, there are many brilliant Black coaching candidates waiting in the wings for their opportunity. You may not know who they are because the phalanx of so-called insiders, agents and broadcasters do not make a habit of shouting out their names. But they are there: Seattle Seahawks defensive coordinator Aden Durde; New England Patriots defensive coordinator Terrell Williams; Los Angeles Rams passing game coordinator Nate Scheelhasse; and New England Patriots passing game coordinator Thomas Brown.

Mike Macdonald is a second-year head coach with the Seahawks. His advisor is NFL veteran Leslie Frazier. Denver defensive coordinator Vance Joseph is obviously a gem. Tee Martin, quarterback coach with the Baltimore Ravens, is an offensive coordinator in waiting.

But what’s to compel team owners to give talented Black coaches a fair opportunity? Two years ago, Patriots owner Bob Kraft replaced Bill Belichick with longtime Patriots linebacker and assistant coach Jerod Mayo. When Mayo was hired, John Wooten, executive director emeritus of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, said he was ecstatic. He called it “a back-flip” moment.

Mayo was fired after one season. His predecessor, Mike Vrabel, who himself was fired as head coach of the Tennessee Titans, is likely to be NFL Coach of the Year. You need that second shot.

But getting back to this year’s Blackout, there needs to be new methods and a new strategy. Relying on a sense of fair play and consciousness does not work in an atmosphere where the apparent goal is to promote whiteness as an ideal and a reality.

There are now three Black head coaches — Aaron Glenn (New York Jets), Todd Bowles (Tampa Bay Buccaneers) and DeMeco Ryans (Houston Texans). They have an obligation to create coaching trees of their own. Who will Glenn, Bowles and Ryans groom as strong head coaching candidates?

Graves said he thought there was a time when the threat of government intervention was enough to compel NFL owners to pay lip service casting a wide net and hiring deserving candidates. Not now. It’s more likely that the government will take hostile action against any team owner who embraces diversity and inclusion as a standard for hiring.

“I always thought at one point that the league should take care to resolve this issue, in a satisfactory way before the government got involved because then they would lose a certain bit of control over the outcome and in reshaping the system,” Graves said. “Now you can’t count on that. So, I don’t really know what the solution is.”

The only place where true or at least relative parity exists is on the field. The NFL’s largely Black labor pool offers tangible evidence of the merits — the absolute necessity — of diversity. The NFL’s Black presence hovers between 60 and 70 percent. This does not include the African Americans who played and later coached major college football.

While not all of those who played want to coach, many do and — like their white counterparts — they have paid serious dues by climbing the ladder only to be put in a holding pen because of nepotism and an old boys’ network that continues to get younger.

Once upon a time, the lightning rod for a level playing field in the NFL used to be quarterback. African Americans were discarded and marginalized because they supposedly did not have the necessities to play the position. Yet at the beginning of the season, 16 of the 32 starting quarterbacks were Black.

I asked Graves on Sunday if he thought African Americans would ever reach a similar tipping point as head coaches and executives.

“The only thing we can do is to continue to give voice and push,” he said. “The more aggressive you are these days the more isolated you can become, so it’s going to be a tightrope in trying to move forward.

“It’s going to be interesting to see what the commissioner’s remarks are.”

On Monday, Goodell will meet with selected media. The commissioner will discuss the Epstein nightmare, then explain, rationalize and perhaps even apologize for the coaching Blackout and offer hope for a better tomorrow. That’s all he can do because he works for 32 owners who have minds of their own.

This is a business where actions speak louder than words. When you have 10 vacancies and not one is filled by an African American candidate, all you can do is shout “shame” in a climate where there is none.

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