Every January, as the NFL’s best teams head into the playoffs, many of its worst dive into the task of finding a new head coach, a chaotic and mysterious process that inevitably brings fresh scrutiny of the league’s commitment to diversity and equity at the sport’s most public-facing management position.
A year ago, nine teams came out of the 2022 regular season seeking a new head coach, and only one hired a Black man. At the end of that hiring cycle, the league was rocked by a blockbuster lawsuit accusing the sport of racist hiring practices.
Now, as the 2023 NFL hiring cycle gets underway, with at least five head coach openings, the landscape is both numbingly familiar – the Houston Texans’ firing of Lovie Smith on Sunday leaves the league with just two Black full-time head coaches – and subtly altered, at least in theory, both by design and circumstance. Whether that translates into progress won’t be known for weeks, if not longer.
“We’ll see at the end of the day where we’re at,” Jonathan Beane, the NFL’s senior vice president and chief diversity and inclusion officer, said in an interview Tuesday. “But I think it’s important to note that these changes that we’ve made, we can’t just look at one hiring cycle and say whether this worked or not. I think we have to give it a few hiring cycles to see if [these efforts] are really bearing fruit.”
There are reasons to suspect that when the 2023 NFL season rolls around, the league will be facing the same question that has been nagging it for a decade: How can a 32-team league in which some 60 percent of the players are Black have only a handful of Black head coaches?
A recent Washington Post investigation found that since Art Shell became the first Black head coach in the NFL’s modern history in 1989, Black men represent just 13 percent of the overall number of hires. And if anything, the problem is getting worse: While 21 of the league’s 32 teams have now changed head coaches since 2020 (some of them multiple times), only two franchises – the Texans and Buccaneers – have hired Black men so far in that span, with the Texans doing so twice. Meanwhile, qualified Black coaches have lost out on millions in personal wealth; marquee franchises have failed to hire even one Black head coach; and the league sold its failed Rooney Rule to corporate America.
This year’s NFL hiring cycle is unique in several ways. Perhaps most significantly, it is the first since the tumultuous events of Feb. 1, 2022, when former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores stunned the sport by filing a class-action lawsuit against the league – with a mission, the suit read, “to shine a light on the racial injustices that take place inside the NFL and to effectuate real change for the future.” The NFL has denied the coaches’ claims.
Asked if he senses additional scrutiny in the first hiring cycle since the lawsuit landed, Beane said: “I always feel that there’s that sense of urgency around what we’re doing. The things we’re doing well, we want to keep doing, and the things we can do better, we need to find a solution to. I feel that every single day. That part does not change.”
With the lawsuit still playing out in the U.S. District Court’s Southern District of New York, the NFL has taken steps to broaden its candidate pool, initiating an “accelerator” program last year to give diverse assistant coaches with head coaching aspirations an audience with ownership and front-office decision-makers. It has also sought to give those candidates a fairer chance during the hiring process, including by delaying the first day interviews can begin, thus giving candidates a cushion to prepare.
That change, Beane said, was designed “to slow down the process a little bit to ensure the pool of [candidates] is broad and that, as [teams] are going into a search, they’re really coming in with an inclusive mind-set.”
In theory, those changes could prevent a situation such as the one that in large part spurred Flores’s lawsuit, which, among other things, alleges the New York Giants offered their top job to Brian Daboll last January before Flores even had his interview.
The league has just two Black head coaches, Pittsburgh’s Mike Tomlin and Tampa Bay’s Todd Bowles. A third, Steve Wilks, finished out the season as the Carolina Panthers’ interim head coach and will have a chance to interview for the full-time position. Minority coaches also hold the top job with the Miami Dolphins (Mike McDaniel, who is biracial), Washington Commanders (Ron Rivera, Latino) and New York Jets (Robert Saleh, Lebanese American).
At least five teams will look for a new head coach this offseason: the Panthers, Indianapolis Colts and Denver Broncos, all of whom fired their coaches during the regular season; the Texans, who fired Smith following their last game Sunday; and the Arizona Cardinals, who fired Kliff Kingsbury on Monday.
Though additional teams could still make changes, that would tie for the smallest turnover in the past decade. A year ago, nine teams named new head coaches, only one of whom, Houston’s Smith, was Black. A 10th coaching change occurred unexpectedly outside the traditional hiring cycle, when Tampa Bay’s Bruce Arians suddenly stepped down in March, prompting the team to promote Bowles, who is Black, to head coach.
Since 2003, the NFL’s hiring practices have been governed by the Rooney Rule, a diversity policy named for former Steelers owner Dan Rooney that requires teams to consider minority candidates for top on-field and front-office positions. Under the most recent changes to the rule, teams must interview at least two external minority or female candidates for head coaching openings, at least one of whom must be interviewed in person.
In recent interviews, league officials have trumpeted these improvements to the Rooney Rule and highlighted the NFL’s efforts to widen the pool of minority candidates while acknowledging the league lacks the power to dictate the hiring practices of individual teams.
Once again, there will be no shortage of deserving Black candidates this hiring cycle. Sitting at the top of the list is San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans, architect of the league’s stingiest defense this season. The Broncos reportedly have already contacted the 49ers for permission to interview Ryans, who, at 38, is just seven years removed from a 10-year playing career. A year ago, Ryans interviewed for the Minnesota Vikings’ head coach opening but declined a second interview, saying he needed more time to develop.
Other Black coaches considered top candidates this cycle include Los Angeles Rams defensive coordinator Raheem Morris and Buffalo Bills defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier – both of whom have been full-time head coaches once already – plus Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy and Broncos defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero, neither of whom has previously had a shot at the top job.
“We’ve had a lot of success here in Buffalo, and [despite] going through some hiring cycles, it hasn’t happened for me. Disappointed, for sure,” Frazier, 63, told The Post last summer about his hopes of landing a second chance to be a head coach. He previously coached the Vikings from 2010 to 2012.
“But I still have a belief and hope that it will happen,” Frazier said. “… I’m on the back side of my career. But there are some guys that are coming behind me, and I hope things will change for them, because there are some guys that are qualified. There’s plenty of qualified candidates. It’s just a matter of someone giving those guys opportunities.”
Also, on that list of prominent Black head coaching candidates this cycle: Flores himself, now the defensive coordinator under Tomlin in Pittsburgh. Flores, 41, was fired by the Dolphins in January 2022 after two straight winning seasons. Only 10 Black men in NFL history have been given multiple chances as full-time head coach.
Among those angling to be the 11th is Wilks, 53, who took over the Panthers in October after the franchise fired Matt Rhule with a 1-4 record and led the team to a 6-6 record the rest of the way. He reportedly was set to interview with ownership for the full-time position Tuesday.
“I hope I played a role in helping all coaches, not just minorities, in the way I lead, in the way my players play … [and in] all the things that go into being a good coach,” Wilks said Monday. “I hope I’m more perceived as a good coach and not just a minority coach. I don’t really try to get into things like who they’re going to hire.”
Wilks’s previous opportunity as a head coach, in 2018 with the Cardinals, lasted just one season. In fact, three of the past five Black men hired as full-time head coaches – Wilks, Smith and David Culley – were fired after just one season. The tenures of Culley and Smith came with the Texans, in back-to-back seasons – a curious example of a team that appears committed to making diverse hires but unwilling to give them legitimate chances to succeed.
“That was the Texans’ decision,” Beane said. “What I want to focus on, and I think what they want to focus on going forward, is making sure that, as they go and determine their next head coach, that you have the best process possible, you’re bringing in the best folks to be candidates to have the opportunity to be your next head coach and that you’re making sure you have a broad, inclusive candidate pool to do so.”
But there is one other factor that makes this hiring cycle unique and that functionally reduces the number of available head coaching jobs for minority candidates: the presence of two superstar names on the market, both of whom are White. One is Sean Payton, who won a Super Bowl with the New Orleans Saints after the 2009 season before stepping away in 2021; the other is Jim Harbaugh, the University of Michigan coach who led the 49ers from 2011 to 2014, highlighted by a trip to the Super Bowl following the 2012 season.
The jockeying for Harbaugh and Payton has already begun. The Broncos reportedly interviewed Harbaugh remotely this week, while the Panthers reportedly have already spoken with him about their opening. Harbaugh’s ties to the Colts, for whom he played in the 1990s, have made him the subject of rampant speculation in Indianapolis.
Payton has been linked to the Broncos and the Cardinals, though hiring him would require both a massive contract and a negotiation over compensation with the Saints, who retain his rights and could command multiple high draft picks in exchange for them.
In theory, the Rooney Rule precludes any team from hiring one of these superstars without giving serious consideration to minority candidates. But “sham interviews” are common, Black coaches told The Post, and league history dictates that a team vying to land Harbaugh or Payton isn’t likely to give more than a cursory and obligatory look at anyone else.
“When you have someone like a Sean Payton or a Jim Harbaugh that has that long record of success, those are people who are going to be highly sought-after. There’s no question about it,” Beane said. His mission in those situations, he said, is to “make sure that pool is broadened to where you’re having true, authentic, bona fide conversations and interviews with other candidates, so they can show you what they can do.”
Whether Harbaugh and Payton receive eight-figure deals to return to the NFL this month, whether one or more Black candidates land an elusive head coaching job, the process is certain to shed additional light on a sport still searching for solutions to an intractable problem.
“Everyone involved in this feels a personal responsibility,” Beane said. “We are the NFL. We’re a big brand. We have a very large fan base. And we have to get this right.”