No easy answers in NFL’s diversity problem
If you’re looking for straight answers pertaining to the most pressing diversity issues in the NFL, including what I perceive as a double standard when assessing head coach candidates and the dearth of minorities with decision-making power with teams, don’t hold your breath.
Something is really skewed when Jim Caldwell, whose head coaching résumé includes a Super Bowl trip with Peyton Manning, gets passed over for Kliff Kingsbury for a Cardinals job that Steve Wilks held for 11 months and 9 days.
Kingsbury has never coached in the NFL and was dumped as Texas Tech’s coach after compiling a 35-40 record in six seasons. But as the Cardinals pointed out in announcing his hire two weeks ago, he’s a “friend of ” Rams coach Sean McVay’s. And he molded Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
It’s also whacked that Caldwell, who will join the Dolphins as a consultant, per multiple reports, was bypassed as the Packers and the Bengals opted for first-time head coaches in Matt LaFleur and Zac Taylor, though the latter has not officially been hired. The Titans’ offense that LaFleur coordinated ranked 25th in the league. Taylor, the Rams’ quarterbacks coach, has never called plays.
“This doesn’t have any rhyme or reason,” John Wooten, chairman of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, which promotes and monitors minority hiring, told USA TODAY.
Caldwell, by the way, produced winning seasons in three of his four years with the Lions and twice went to the playoffs — if you know the history of the Leos, that’s even more impressive.
“They think that because they’ve got these young quarterbacks (in multiple cases), they can only relate to young coaches,” Wooten added. “Quarterbacks relate to leadership.”
Maybe some answers relating to the trends can be found in the “2018 Racial and Gender Report Card” on the NFL, released on Wednesday by The Institute for Diversity and Sport at the University of Central Florida, headed by scholar and author Richard Lapchick.
Or maybe not quite. Lapchick has surely been a well-respected leader for years in monitoring diversity trends for pro and college sporting institutions. In his latest report, he gives the NFL an overall B grade, with an A- for racial hiring, while pointing out how teams lag behind significantly compared to Roger Goodell’s league office.
Sure, the report, based on 2018 data, is already outdated given that it doesn’t account for the current hiring cycle. The researchers can’t be blamed for that, given the defined timeline for the report.
Yet Lapchick was unaware when contacted Wednesday morning by USA TODAY that a preliminary draft of the report, with information provided by teams and the league office, included gems like these: The Titans had six minority assistant coaches listed as coordinators. Cannon Matthews, a quality control coach, was listed as Washington’s defensive coordinator, a title that actually belongs to Greg Manusky. Kansas City’s running backs coach, Deland McCullough, was listed as defensive coordinator (the job Bob Sutton was fired from on Tuesday). Chris Grier, Miami’s general manager in title last year who has since been granted more power, wasn’t listed among GMs, whereas the 49ers’ senior personnel executive, Martin Mayhew, was categorized among GMs despite John Lynch operating in that role for San Francisco.
Those particular items in question were deleted when the report was officially released. But given that the published version states the data used was provided by the league office, the notion that someone within the NFL signed off on providing that erroneous information in the first place, pertaining to such a sensitive issue, is appalling.
An attempt to pad the numbers? NFL teams have been accused over the years of conducting “sham” interviews to comply with the Rooney Rule. Now I’m wondering if there are credibility-staining attempts to play a shell game with basic HR data.
Then again, straight answers on diversity are not easy to come by.
With another head coach hiring cycle winding down — after finishing up in Super Bowl LIII, Taylor and Patriots linebackers coach Brian Flores, set to take the Dolphins’ top job, are expected to be formally announced — the regression in the ranks for minority coaches and general managers is clearly a bad look for the NFL. Of the eight head coach openings, Flores is the only person of color to ascend, while five of the eight African-American coaches who started the 2018 season are out.
Hey, it’s a tough business, and for white coaches, too. Hue Jackson’s 336-1 record as Browns’ coach can’t be defended like the minimal time afforded Wilks (3-13). Vance Joseph was dumped after just two years with the Broncos (1121), but John Elway also was accountable for the franchise’s first back-toback losing seasons in 46 years.
It remains to be seen if LaFleur or Kingsbury will follow the Colts’ Frank Reich and the Eagles’ Doug Pederson as unheralded candidates who proved to be strong hires in first-time roles.
Some will contend that the patterns are cyclical, but that doesn’t explain why Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bienemy (who like Pederson didn’t have full play-calling duty while working under Andy Reid) was passed over. I mean, Bienemy worked with Mahomes, too. Kris Richard, the Cowboys’ defensive play-caller, also was bypassed.
Undoubtedly, there are nuances with every case, every team. Yet for all the efforts, including a strengthened Rooney Rule and candidate lists from the league’s career development panel, the bottom line is that NFL teams are shamefully moving backward when it comes to minority coaching hires.
With 15 head coach openings after the 2017 and 2018 seasons in a league in which more than 70 percent of the players are African-Americans, just two African-American coaches (Wilks and Flores, when the latter becomes official) were selected.
Why?
“I definitely do not think there is any intentional motivation to exclude black coaches,” agent Don Yee said. “However, I don’t think the league, ownership and the Fritz Pollard Alliance are getting to the core structural problems.”
Yee, whose clients include Tom Brady, 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo and a low-profile African-American college coach, Nevada’s Jay Norvell, has written op-eds on social issues in sports and is the founder of the Pacific Pro Football League slated to begin in 2020. He suspects one factor in the diversity numbers is that decision-makers are inherently more comfortable picking those who are culturally similarly.
That might be true. And the notion sounds so 1999, that pre-Rooney Rule era. Some of the same explanations and theories expressed now were heard in the past.
And then like now, the lack of straight answers seems inherent to the struggle.