Before Mahomes vs. Hurts, there was Williams
When the confetti fell at Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday, Doug Williams’s eyes welled up with tears as he watched from the basement of his home in Northern Virginia.
The Chiefs’ win over the Bengals, which followed the Eagles’ victory over the 49ers that afternoon, set up a meeting Williams had long hoped to see.
For the first time in NFL history, two Black quarterbacks — Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes and Philadelphia’s Jalen Hurts — will play in a Super Bowl, following a path Williams helped pave 35 years ago. In January 1988, he became the first Black quarterback to play in the big game — and guided Washington to a 42-10 victory over the Broncos to win MVP of Super Bowl XXII.
“I was emotional about it,” Williams said of watching the games Sunday. “I had water in my eyes. Just to see it was happening . ... People ask me who I want to win. I’ve already won. For me, I’ve already won because both are in it.”
Williams views this year’s Super Bowl with a mix of elation and hope — elation for Mahomes and Hurts, and hope the NFL continues to do more to provide opportunities both for Black quarterbacks and Black coaches.
“We’re a lot of years behind,” he said. “This should’ve happened a long time ago, but we’ll take it now . ... But Black coaches are going to always be at the top of this whole thing. We’ll celebrate these two guys, but we’re not celebrating
Black coaches. Across the league we had, what, (nine) Black starting quarterbacks this year? Well, the chances of one or two of them going to a Super Bowl is a lot greater. But it’s a lot less when you look at how many (Black) coaches we have in this league, percentage-wise. It’s just not fair.”
Williams acknowledged some of the steps the league has taken in recent years to provide more opportunities to Black coaches, including an alteration to the Rooney Rule, which was established in 2003 and requires teams to interview minority candidates for coaching and executive positions. This year was the first in which all 32 NFL teams were mandated to employ a woman or minority as an offensive assistant coach.
The Senior Bowl has also changed its format this year to provide assistants a chance to coach “up” in elevated roles. Williams’s son, D.J. Williams, an offensive assistant for the Saints, is a quarterbacks coach in the college allstar game and one of many Black and minority assistants participating.
But according to a recent Washington Post investigation, the paths toward becoming a head coach are limited for Black men and women. Many are denied the same chances their White counterparts receive, despit ance in the AFC championship game had shades of Williams’s Super Bowl victory. Against the Cincinnati Bengals, Mahomes played through a high ankle sprain he suffered the previous week to throw for 326 yards and a pair of touchdowns. Despite aggravating it in the game, he stayed in and helped set up the Chiefs’ game-winning field goal.
Williams suffered a knee injury in the first quarter of Super Bowl XXII, but played through the pain to throw for 340 yards and four touchdowns in Washington’s lopsided win. Keoki Kamau, then Washington’s assistant athletic trainer, rushed onto the field after Williams crumpled to the ground with a noncontact injury. Kamau extended his arm to examine Williams’s knee, but Williams immediately pushed back.
“My hand went out to tell him, ‘Don’t touch me.’ Because I was thinking to myself that if the good Lord would let me get up, I was going to finish this game,” Williams said. “I remember ‘Bu’ (offensive coordinator Joe Bugel) coming to me at halftime and saying: ‘Hey, stud, you don’t have to go back. We can handle this.’ And I told him, ‘No, I’m going to finish this game. I started it.’”
Washington jumped to a 35-10 lead by halftime, but Williams — thanks to adrenaline and medicine at the break — stayed in until the very end, by which point his knee was so swollen he couldn’t bend it. He had arthroscopic surgery to remove bone chips in the knee after Washington’s victory parade.
Mahomes has two weeks to rest up before Super Bowl LVII. He told local media Thursday his knowledge of the history of Black quarterbacks has grown over the years. In 2021, he helped fund the Legacy Bowl, an all-star game for HBCU players created by the Black College
Football Hall of Fame. Williams and former quarterback James Harris are co-founders of the organization.
“You’ve seen over time, whenever Doug Williams or Michael Vick, Donovan McNabb go out and play great football, it gives other guys like me and Jalen chances to have this platform and have this spot on an NFL team,” Mahomes said. “And so, if we can
continue to show that we can consistently be great, I think it’ll just continue to open doors for other kids growing up to follow their dreams, to be a quarterback of the NFL team.”
In talking with Philadelphia media, Hurts said Super Bowl LVII is “history” and “something worthy of being noted.” He has counted Cam Newton and Vick among his mentors, and he has texted
with Williams, who regularly supports players across the league.
“To be on the world stage and have two Black quarterbacks start in the Super Bowl, I think it’s special,” Mahomes said. “... The guys that came before me and Jalen set the stage for this, and now I’m just glad that we can kind of set the stage for guys that are kids that are coming up now.”