Goodell: ‘We’re not satisfied’
Commissioner plans to continue to address diversity issue after results of latest hiring cycle
Roger Goodell isn’t blind to the NFL’s glaring diversity problem.
The NFL commissioner acknowledged Thursday the league isn’t happy with how this latest hiring cycle unfolded.
Despite the league making improving diversity and inclusiveness a major initiative, including enhancements of the Rooney Rule, just two of the seven head coaching jobs were filled by minorities.
They include new Texans coach David Culley, who is Black, and Jets coach Robert Saleh, who is of Lebanese descent. Three of the six general manager openings were filled by Black executives, including Martin Mayhew in Washington, Brad Holmes with the Lions and Terry Fontenot with the Falcons.
The NFL currently has three Black head coaches — Culley, the Steelers’ Mike Tomlin and the Dolphins’ Brian Flores — in addition to two other minority head coaches in Saleh, a former Texans assistant, and Washington’s Ron Rivera, who is Hispanic.
“It wasn’t what we expected, and it’s not what we expect going forward,” Goodell said during his annual state of the league Super Bowl news conference. “We have to look at what went right and what went wrong. They’re not the outcomes we wanted. We want it to be a natural process. We’re not satisfied. We feel like we can do better, and we’re going to.
“We want to make the NFL, our clubs more diverse. It’s much broader than just head coaches, but head coaches are important, and we put a lot of our policies and focus on that this year. I’m not sure there’s an issue we spent more time working with our ownership on.”
Super Bowl LV — pitting the Chiefs against the Buccaneers — includes Kansas City offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy. Bieniemy was passed over for a head coaching job for the third consecutive year despite interviewing with six of the seven teams that had vacancies.
“I’ll be curious to hear their comments about how he did, why he wasn’t picked,” Eagles coach Andy Reid said. “He works his tail off, he’s relentless in studying the game, relentless at studying what would be his plan as a head football coach. He doesn’t miss anything. Whoever gets him, whenever they get him, will be very, very lucky.”
Tampa Bay offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich, who wasn’t requested for interviews despite his work with quarterback Tom Brady, and defensive coordinator Todd Bowles, whose interview with Detroit was canceled after it hired Dan Campbell, were also disappointed by the process.
“You get frustrated a little bit, but all you can do is work,” Bowles said.
The NFL adapted its policies to allow Bieniemy to do a virtual interview with the Texans during the postseason after he wasn’t initially requested prior to the team’s hiring general manager Nick Caserio.
“We made changes,” Goodell said. “It didn’t lead to opportunities for Eric. Eric is a great football coach.”
Goodell was asked if there will be further conversations with owners to improve policies going forward.
“The answer is yes, we’ll have more discussions,” Goodell said. “I’ll reinforce again while we might be disappointed, there are a lot of positives we need to build on, and that commitment is there.”
The Rooney Rule requires teams to interview at least two minority candidates for every general manager and head coaching vacancy and now awards teams with compensatory third-round draft picks for two years in a row when a minority employee is hired as a GM or head coach by another team, but the NFL hasn’t made much tangible progress.
“You don’t ever want to be recognized for what you do by your race or color,” Bieniemy said. “You want to be recognized by how great of a coach you are. Why we got to keep talking about the color? In reality, these are just good ol’ ball coaches.”
Goodell was asked about former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick being out of the league since the 2016 season after raising issues of social justice and systemic racism, including police brutality, by kneeling during the national anthem. Goodell has apologized publicly to Kaepernick.
“I said clearly back in June we wish we would’ve listened to players earlier,” Goodell said. “It didn’t start last summer. It started over two years ago, and we’ve been working with the Players Coalition. We had a lot of players bringing these issues to us. Colin brought a lot of attention to this, and he deserves our recognition for that and our appreciation.”
Following Goodell’s news conference, NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith applauded players’ strong stances on social justice issues.
“I’m proud that our players have been on the right side of history,” Smith said. “I’m proud of our men.”
Texans safety Michael Thomas, an Aldine Nimitz and Stanford graduate who’s an NFLPA executive vice president, said there needs to be metrics and accountability on this issue.
“At the end of the day, the players are doing their part by using their platform and using their voices,” Thomas said. “Having some type of transparency, that would be great.”
Another major topic of conversation was the NFL’s adaptation to the coronavirus pandemic with new safety protocols and how daily testing allowed the league to make it to the Super Bowl without any games missed.
How the NFL goes forward this year might be extremely similar. That likely involves a virtual offseason and possibly no preseason games again despite the start of vaccinations.
“We anticipate that a lot of the things that we did last year with respect to training camps, with respect to the offseason will be done again,” Goodell said. “Virtual is going to be part of our life for the long term. I think we learned — and the coaches learned and the players learned — that it was actually a very positive way to install offenses and to work in the offseason. I don’t know when normal will occur. I don’t know when normal will occur again.
“We have learned to operate in a very difficult environment. We have found solutions, and we will do it again.”
For the league to make it to the Super Bowl without having to cancel any games was an accomplishment. The NFL considered shifting one Ravens-Steelers game to an 18th week but was able to avoid that unwanted scenario.
“That’s a big thing for us,” Goodell said. “We had to adapt at every stage. This was a year where we were all challenged and had to find innovative solutions.”
Goodell emphasized that the NFL believes in Dr. Anthony Fauci’s advice to not have large gatherings for Super Bowl parties.
“We hope we were in some ways representative of doing things the right way this season,” Goodell said. “We focused on how to do this safety, and that includes our fans. The same goes for Super Bowl Sunday.”
As far as vaccination, the commissioner didn’t provide a prediction on whether all players will be vaccinated. He really can’t answer that, considering vaccination is voluntary.
“We’re proponents of the vaccine,” Goodell said. “That’s important for the health of our communities. It’s too early to say if vaccines will be part of the solution. We hope much of our society will be vaccinated by the summer. We’ll adapt.”