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    Black coaches make history

    Online Niel Posted on

    At the start of the 2024 season, nine of the NFL’s 32 teams were led by a black head coach — the most in league history.

    But the full picture of coaching diversity in the NFL is more nuanced and complex.

    As part of His NFL Coaches ProjectUSA TODAY Sports has once again compiled biographical information — such as age, gender, race/ethnicity, playing history and coaching history — for every on-field coach in the league at the start of the season. This ranged from head coaches and coordinators at the top of the proverbial coaching ladder to quality control coaches and colleagues at the bottom. Strength and conditioning coaches and those working in analytics or administration were excluded from the data, as were trainees.

    The 2024 data shows progress in some areas — such as at the position coaching level, where non-white coaches now hold nearly half of the roles — but regression in others, particularly on the offensive side of the ball. Non-white coaches hold a lower percentage of offensive coaching roles than in 2023, and there were no black offensive coordinators in the league at the start of the season for the first time since 1988.

    Overall, the NFL’s on-field coaches are about as diverse as they were a year ago, at least on a percentage basis. At the start of the season, non-white coaches made up about 44.3 percent of the league’s coaching staff, down from 0.1 percent of last year’s total.

    Richard Lapchick founded the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida, where he helped track diversity in the NFL and other sports leagues for more than a decade. He praised the league for its recent diversity initiatives and cited the jump to nine black coaches from six a year ago as a significant achievement that should not be overshadowed by takes a step back in other areas, such as offensive coordinator.

    “I’m more impressed with the wins than I am (discouraged) with the negative numbers out there,” said Lapchick, who has since left Central Florida but remains president of The Institute for Sport and Social Justice, a nonprofit organization.

    NFL head coach wins

    There were eight head coaching vacancies in the NFL this offseason, and half of them were filled by black coaches: Atlanta’s Raheem Morris; Dave Canales in Carolina; Antonio Pierce in Las Vegas; and Jerod Mayo in New England. Pierce was retained after a stint as interim coach while Mayo succeeded Bill Belichick with the Patriots, who did not interview any other candidates.

    According to USA TODAY Sports research, it was the first time four black coaches were hired in the same coaching cycle since the 2003 implementation of the Rooney Rule, which requires NFL teams to interview black candidates for key positions.

    It also meant that, for the first time in NFL history, more than 25 percent of the league’s head coaching jobs would be filled by black coaches.

    Lapchick said that while it’s important to examine broad trends within the league, head coaching diversity is what should — and should — be the focus.

    “I think that’s where the focus needs to be,” he said. “This is who the team presents as leadership. It was the area where there was the least growth over a long period of time. So to get that growth and increase the number of black head coaches was a significant accomplishment. for the NFL.”

    USA TODAY Sports data reflects the makeup of the coaching staff at the start of each season for ease and consistency. The number of non-white head coaches in the NFL has since declined, with former New York Jets coach Robert Saleh among the two head coaches who were fired in the last two months. (Dennis Allen, who is white, is the other.)

    No black offensive coordinators

    While the league’s increase in head coaching diversity is notable, so is the step back in diversity at the position that often serves as a springboard for a head coach: offensive coordinator.

    For the first time in 36 years, none of the NFL’s 31 offensive coordinators at the start of the season were black. (The San Francisco 49ers do not have a title offensive coordinator.)

    Two of the 2023 coordinators of color, Thomas Brown and Brian Johnson, began the season as passing game coordinators, while a third, Eric Bieniemy, returned to the college ranks at UCLA. Canales left his position as offensive coordinator to become the head coach of the Carolina Panthers.

    Brown became the league’s only black offensive coordinator on Tuesday when the Chicago Bears elevated him to the role. after firing Shane Waldron. The only other black offensive coordinator in the league is Mike Kafka of the New York Giants. In previous years, USA TODAY Sports identified Kafka as white, as did the NFL its own 2022 diversity and inclusion report. A Giants spokesman said Tuesday that Kafka, whose maternal family is from Puerto Ricoidentifies as Hispanic.

    While half of the defensive coordinators hired during the offseason were black coaches, the offensive coordinator was a different story. Sixteen of the league’s 32 teams hired a new offensive coordinator last winter, and all were white.

    Jonathan Beane, the NFL’s senior vice president and chief diversity and inclusion officer, could not be reached for an interview. But him said The Athletic he hopes the lack of diversity at offensive coordinator turns out to be a one-year anomaly.

    Data from the lower levels of the coaching ladder give him reason to hope. The league has two more non-white quarterbacks coaches than it did a year ago, and overall, nearly half of the coaches at the position coach level are diverse.

    Defense even more diverse

    Historically, there have been more black coaches on the defensive side of the ball than on offense, and that remains true in 2024. Over 54% of defensive coaches at all levels are non-white, compared to just 39% of offensive coaches.

    The slight decline in diversity on the offensive side of the ball comes even as the league office continues to push for more non-white coaches to get entry-level opportunities there. In 2022, the NFL began requiring each team to hire a woman or a coach from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group as an offensive assistant. The league office also provides funding for teams to be hired for that role.

    Interestingly, the coaching group that saw the biggest jump in its percentage of non-white coaches is not the offense or defense, but special teams. While black coaches hold only seven of the NFL’s 32 special teams coordinator jobs, they hold half of the assistant special teams coordinator jobs.

    Ranking of the teams

    For the third straight year, USA TODAY Sports also examined coaching diversity by team and found the top (Pittsburgh Steelers) and bottom (Cincinnati Bengals) teams unchanged.

    The Steelers, whose coaching staff is 63 percent non-white, are one of seven NFL teams where black coaches make up the majority of the staff. Four of the seven had a non-white head coach at the start of the 2024 season.

    On the other side of the spectrum are the Bengals, New Orleans Saints, Los Angeles Chargers and Kansas City Chiefs — the four teams in the league where 2/3 or more of the coaching staff is white. The Bengals have five black coaches, including none at the coordinator level or above, among the 21 on-field coaches on their staff.

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