At the day after the New England Patriots ended their NFL season with a depressing 4-13 file, crew proprietor Robert Kraft fired Jerod Mayo, the crew’s first Black head trainer. In a press convention following his choice, Kraft defined that he put Mayo in “an untenable situation” by way of hiring him to guide an underperforming crew.
Kraft’s overview displays an all-too-familiar truth for Black coaches within the NFL. Even though Black gamers account for 53% of all NFL gamers, simplest 19% of head coaches are Black males.
Originally of the 2024 season, the NFL set its personal league file with 9 of its 32 head training jobs held by way of minorities. Along with Mayo, Las Vegas’ Antonio Pierce, Pittsburgh’s Mike Tomlin, Tampa Bay’s Todd Bowles, Atlanta’s Raheem Morris and Houston’s DeMeco Ryans are Black. They have been joined by way of Carolina’s Dave Canales, who’s Mexican American, Miami’s biracial Mike McDaniel and the New York Jets’ Robert Saleh, who’s of Lebanese descent.
Via season’s finish, 3 of the ones coaches have been long past, together with the Raiders’ Pierce. Pierce, like Mayo, used to be given one season to show round a crew with a dropping file. Saleh used to be fired all over the season.
For my part as a student of race {and professional} sports activities, the firings printed the NFL’s double usual for Black head coaches and recommend that Black males are nonetheless valued extra for his or her athletic prowess than their management talents.
All over a Fox NFL Sunday display in a while after Mayo’s firing, former Patriots tight finish Rob Gronkowski known as Mayo’s firing stunning, disappointing and “unfair.”
ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith used to be fast responsible the race of Mayo as an element. “They call it Black Monday for a reason,” Smith mentioned. “Jerod Mayo was clearly not given a lengthy enough opportunity.”
A checkered historical past
In 1921, a 12 months after the NFL’s inaugural season, Fritz Pollard become the primary Black head trainer when he used to be employed to guide the Akron Execs. It will take just about 70 years ahead of the NFL had its 2d Black head trainer – Artwork Shell of the Oakland Raiders in 1989.
Since then, Black coaches have had few possibilities within the NFL. Even fewer have succeeded. Most effective two Black head coaches have gained Tremendous Bowl titles: Tony Dungy of the Indianapolis Colts in 2007 and Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2008.
To handle the loss of Black head coaches, the NFL enacted in 2003 what’s referred to as the Rooney Rule, a hiring apply named after Dan Rooney, the previous proprietor of the Pittsburgh Steelers who sat at the NFL’s variety committee. The rule of thumb calls for groups to incorporate two minority candidate all over the interview procedure for head training jobs and used to be later carried out to common managers, senior executives and assistant coaches.
However even with the rule of thumb, the proportion of Black coaches has constantly been less than the proportion of Black gamers. Analysis has proven that Black coaches are each much less more likely to be promoted to go training jobs than their white opposite numbers and no more more likely to obtain a 2d likelihood after a dropping season.
If truth be told, for the reason that Rooney Rule used to be instituted in 2003, nonwhite coaches had been greater than 3 times as more likely to be fired after one season than white coaches, in step with knowledge accumulated by way of america Lately NFL Coaches Venture.
Their knowledge didn’t come with the ratings of Black assistant coaches who’re robotically lost sight of for his or her first head training jobs.
Eric Bieniemy takes the sphere as a UCLA assistant trainer all over the 2024 season.
Jevone Moore/Icon Sportswire by means of Getty Photographs
Eric Bieniemy, for instance, shared two Tremendous Bowl championships as offensive coordinator with the Kansas Town Chiefs in 2019 and 2022. Given his revel in, he used to be broadly anticipated by way of NFL analysts to earn a head training process.
With a view to pursue that purpose, Bieniemy left the Chiefs in 2023 to enroll in the Washington Commanders and used to be a favourite to change into the crew’s subsequent head trainer. However the Commanders have been bought on the finish of the 2023 season, and the brand new house owners promptly fired him.
Bieniemy is again within the NFL after being employed in February 2025 by way of the Chicago Bears as their operating backs trainer, a decrease rank than his prior place as offensive coordinator.
The advantage of the doubt
In 2020, the NFL expressed its reinforce for the Black Lives Topic motion by way of selling social justice messages on finish zones and gamers’ helmets. The NFL additionally employed Roc Country, Hip-Hop multi-millionaire Jay-Z’s corporate, to regulate its track and leisure.
A 12 months later, the NFL officially ended their decades-long apply of race norming by which the league robotically gave Black gamers decrease baseline cognitive scores than white gamers in criminal movements associated with concussions and next dementia.
However the ones measures, just like the Rooney Rule, have no longer closed the racial disparities amongst NFL head coaches and feature no longer stopped white coaches from showing to be much more likely to obtain the good thing about the doubt.
The NFL used purpose submit pads in 2022 to proclaim the league’s efforts to finish racism.
Wealthy Graessle/Icon Sportswire by means of Getty Photographs
Nonetheless unresolved is a 2022 lawsuit filed by way of Black head trainer Brian Flores. Regardless of posting two successful seasons all over his three-year tenure, he used to be fired by way of the Miami Dolphins. Flores filed a go well with towards the NFL, the Miami Dolphins and two different NFL groups alleging fashionable racial discrimination and hiring practices.
All over an interview with newshounds ahead of the 2025 Tremendous Bowl, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell defended the league’s variety tasks, pronouncing, “We’ve proven to ourselves that it does make the NFL better.”
Goodell used to be fast to show that the NFL’s variety efforts don’t imply a “quota system” by which a undeniable selection of applicants of every race are employed.
“There’s no requirement to hire a particular individual on the basis of race or gender,” Goodell mentioned. “This is about opening that funnel and bringing the best talent into the NFL.”
