On Thursday afternoon, the number of Black NFL head coaches stood at one.
One.
That’s because the Texans unfairly fired David Culley yesterday and Miami shockingly and ridiculously fired Brian Flores on Monday.
Those moves left Pittsburgh’s Mike Tomlin as the lone brother in the 32 man VIP room.
As the NFL heads into the first week of the playoffs, the dearth of Black head coaches is a glaring and massive weight dangling over the entire NFL. It’s a grave and embarrassing issue magnified at the start of 2021 and replicated at the start of 2022.
At the end of the 2020 season, there were seven head coaching vacancies. Only the Texans hired a Black coach, the aforementioned David Culley.
Culley had four decades of coaching experience and was the first Black quarterback at Vanderbilt in the 1970s. He understood the game and also understood THE game.
I wrote in August that Culley was hired to navigate the team through the disaster left behind by Bill O’Brien. That added his name to the NFL’s unofficial, yet very apparent, Black head coach leasing program.
Despite Houston’s talent-depleted roster, Culley led the Texans to a 4-13 record. They played hard and, most importantly, remained drama free, something they failed to do in O’Brien’s final two seasons.
How significant was Culley’s performance? Ask Shad Khan and the Jaguars, whose Urban Meyer experiment imploded and made the Jaguars the laughing stock of the league.
Meanwhile, in Miami, Brian Flores had the same job as Culley.
He cleaned house after Adam Gase’s disastrous tenure, acquired draft capital, and became the first coach since Dave Wannstedt to have two winning seasons (Flores went 5-11, 10-6, 9-8).
Wannstedt, for those wondering, last coached the Dolphins 17 years ago.
Flores built something special in Miami. As a reward, Dolphins owner Stephen Ross fired him.
Ross felt that “key dynamics of our football organization weren’t functioning at a level I want it to be and felt that this decision was in the best interest of the Miami Dolphins.”
Gase publically lambasted his team and eventually lost the locker room. After two losing seasons, he was gone.
Flores changed the culture and righted the ship. After three seasons, the last two winning ones, he was fired.
Can A Brother Get A Second Chance?
Culley and Flores are the latest examples of the treatment meted to Black NFL head coaches. They join coaches like Jim Caldwell, Todd Bowles and Anthony Lynn on a list that, unfortunately, continues to grow.
Caldwell coached the Colts to the Super Bowl in the 2009 season. He moved to Detroit and over four years led them to three winning seasons. But winning obviously irked the Lions, as they released Caldwell and hired Matt Patricia, who subsequently destroyed the franchise.
Patricia is a special advisory with the Patriots while Caldwell (62-50) hasn’t coached since 2017.
Todd Bowles led the Jets to a 10-6 record in his first season. But then poor drafts and personnel decisions by then-GM Mike Maccagnan hamstrung Bowles.
Before the start of the 2017 season, the team parted ways with veterans Nick Mangold, Darrelle Revis, Brandon Marshall, David Harris, and Eric Decker, and lost Matt Forte to injuries and age. Those moves signaled the end of Bowles. A year later, he was fired.
Last season, Bowles was the defensive coordinator for the Bucs and won the Super Bowl. Meanwhile, the Jets suffered for two seasons under Adam Gase, who brought his culture and talent-killing talents to New York.
At least they hired Robert Saleh and have a slew of first-round draft picks this year.
Then there’s Anthony Lynn.
Lynn had a 33-31 record with the Chargers. He coached them to the playoffs, suffered through injuries and heartbreaking losses. Then they finally found their franchise quarterback in Justin Herbert. But a year after drafting Herbert, the Chargers fired Lynn and hired Brandon Staley.
Staley failed to make the playoffs this season and Lynn, Detroit’s offensive coordinator, was fired by the Lions this month.
Now the NFL is embarrassingly left with one Black coach, and even he doesn’t get the respect he deserves despite holding the record for consecutive non-losing seasons (15).
Mind you, he defied the doubters and made the playoffs this season.
The NFL’s inability to effectively deal with owner hiring bias is exposed again this year.
If they’re serious about addressing it, which they haven’t been in the past, the time is now.
As of Thursday night, there were openings with the Chicago Bears, NY Giants, Denver Broncos, Miami Dolphins, Minnesota Vikings, Houston Texans, and Jacksonville Jaguars. There are rumblings that the Raiders might be on the hunt as well, but interim head coach Rich Bisaccia has them in the playoffs, so nothing is certain in Las Vegas as of yet.
And while there has been a slew of interview requests, no new hires have been made as of yet.
Brian Flores is the hot name, with Chicago being the frontrunner. But now that Culley has been fired, Houston could step into the picture, especially since their star QB, Deshaun Watson, wanted to be traded to Miami to play with Flores. If the Texans hire Flores, that could keep Watson in Houston when/if his legal troubles are resolved.
If they were smart, the Giants should throw everything at Flores and bring him home. The Brooklyn-born and raised Flores would stabilize the team and greatly improve a roster that regressed to become, arguably, the worst in the league under Joe Judge.
For a team that was the last to start a Black QB and haven’t had a winning head coach since Tom Coughlin (2004 – 2015), the proven Flores needs to be their first and only call.
Other Black head coaching rumblings include the Jaguars bringing Bucs offensive coordinator back to Jacksonville, where he played QB for his first four years in the league.
Yet this is all media fodder.
Another Slap In The Face?
Back in November, the NFL circulated a list of vetted minority NFL coaching candidates. It featured powerful, experienced and successful Black coaches such as Eric Bieniemy (Chiefs OC), Todd Bowles, Byron Leftwich, James Franklin (Penn State HC), Leslie Frazier (Assistant HC/Defensive Coordinator, Bills), Vance Joseph (Defensive Coordinator, Cardinals), Jerod Mayo (Inside Linebackers, Patriots), Raheem Morris (Defensive Coordinator, Rams), DeMeco Ryans (Defensive Coordinator, 49ers), David Shaw (Stanford HC) and Mel Tucker (Michigan State HC).
It’s an impressive list of highly qualified Black candidates.
But with former head coaches like Bill O’Brien, Doug Pederson and Dann Quinn being floated around, many remain doubtful that NFL owners will change their hiring biases and practices of recycling the same old white names.
Who can blame them?
One look at their desire to find the next Sean McVay and Kliff Kingsbury and it’s easy to decipher that they have a prototype.
It’s eerily similar to the plight of the Black quarterback, where white owners were comfortable starting Black players at every position except under center. They all sought the tall, relatively immobile pocket passer instead of the agile, equally as smart and gifted Black quarterbacks that they so often shifted to wide receiver.
These actions manifest the belief that Black head coaches can play clean up man but can never get a second shot to lead.
Need more proof? Look no further than Bowles, Frazier, Joseph and Morris. They have yet to receive another head coaching opportunity.
Meanwhile, men like O’Brien, who left the Texans in shambles, and Pederson, who blatantly tanked the Eagles’ final game of the 2020 season, always remain in the mix simply because they make owners more comfortable.
The NFL needs to end the detrimental Black head coach cleanup man leasing program that’s plaguing the league and humiliating Black coaches.
If Black head coaches get blanked again this season, it’s a slap in the face and another reminder that Black coaches are good enough to clean up but not lead.
If history is any indication, prepare for the answer to “what did the five fingers say to the face?”
