Eric Bieniemy poster child of sorts
Over the past two decades, no coach has interviewed for more NFL head coaching jobs without being hired than Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy.
According to USA TODAY Sports research, which tracked interviews using team announcements and news media reports, Bieniemy has interviewed for 16 head coaching positions with 15 different teams over the past five hiring cycles. (He’s twice been a candidate with the New York Jets.) Only eight teams from 2019 to 2022 hired a new head coach and not interviewed Bieniemy.
Yet despite his popularity as a candidate, the 53-year-old former running back has yet to be hired – a fact that has perplexed academics, coaches and others around the NFL, while turning Bieniemy into a poster child for the league’s diversity issues.
“For whatever reason, he’s gotten caught up in this cycle of interviews with no head coaching offers,” said Rod Graves, the executive director of the Fritz Pollard Alliance. “It does make you wonder.”
The Chiefs declined to make Bieniemy available for an interview, and his agent did not respond to messages.
But in 2020, the coach told USA TODAY Sports he was ready for a head coaching opportunity and hopeful about finding the right fit.
“When it comes to hiring, I can’t control what goes on in the owner’s head. I can’t force them to make the decision,” Bieniemy said at the time.
“My job is to make sure that when I’m in there giving that interview, I’m being my most authentic self. They get to see me, feel me for who I am and what I’m about.”
Is Bieniemy a hot candidate for the 2023 NFL season?
The Indianapolis Colts announced late Thursday that they had interviewed Bieniemy for their head coaching vacancy. It’s unclear whether he will receive any additional opportunities in the next few weeks.
American University professor N. Jeremi Duru worries that he, like other coaching candidates before him, might now be in a precarious position – a hotshot coaching candidate who’s been in the mix for so long that his odds go cold.
“This narrative begins to develop that, ‘hey, maybe this person isn’t getting a job year after year for a reason.’ And it’s unfortunate, and it’s unfair, but I’m worried that some owners are now running that narrative with respect to Eric Bieniemy,” Duru explained.
“It would seem as though it should be an easy decision to hire Eric Bieniemy as a head coach. Now, because of that narrative, I think an owner who does it would be viewed as going out on a limb and really taking a chance.”
With Bieniemy at the helm, the Chiefs offense has been consistently among the NFL’s best by a wide range of statistical markers – prompting researchers like Kennesaw State professor Joshua Pitts to explore his case indepth.
In a study published last year, Pitts and two of his colleagues examined promotion probabilities among NFL coordinators from 2003 to 2020 and found that Black coordinators weren’t statistically more or less likely than white coordinators to be hired as head coaches – with one notable exception. From 2018 to 2020, the researchers found evidence that Black coordinators were significantly less likely to get hired.
By changing only Bieniemy’s race in their statistical models, they found that his estimated probability of becoming a head coach in 2020 increased by nearly 15%.
“His race has definitely harmed his likelihood of becoming a head coach,” Pitts said. “Now is that because of discrimination, or is that because of something else? I don’t know.”
Chiefs’ success makes interview process more challenging
NBC Sports analyst and Hall of Fame coach Tony Dungy said he believes Bieniemy has, in some ways, been a victim of his team’s success. Because the Chiefs are consistently in the playoffs, Bieniemy usually has had to squeeze interviews in between game prep, or hope a team will wait until after the season to interview him.
“He’s got a small window and he’s the hot commodity, so he’s doing three, four, five interviews in a cycle. You can’t be as prepared and you can’t know as much about the team,” Dungy explained.
“I think the way we do it is ridiculous now. I would recommend no interviews, no hiring until after the Super Bowl, to make it fair for everybody.”
In the meantime, Bieniemy continues to wait.
Of the 15 coaches hired instead of him since 2019, seven have already been fired. An eighth, Bruce Arians, retired last spring.
“This is what I’ve always said: They can fire you! That’s what they do in the NFL,” ESPN analyst Herm Edwards said. “(Bieniemy) deserves an opportunity at least.”
Edwards, a former Chiefs head coach, said he thinks Bieniemy’s best move at this point would be to wait until current head coach Andy Reid retires, in hopes that owner Clark Hunt will hire him as Reid’s successor.
“I think the owner who does give Eric Bieniemy a chance will be rewarded substantially,” added Duru. “But we’ll see if that happens.”