“You would assume since I’m an offensive coordinator, I’d be a viable candidate for a head coach job, but it’s hard to say. I don’t know what (the owners) are thinking.” [1] Lionel Taylor, 1981
What happened to Eric Bieniemy and Byron Leftwich in this latest coaching cycle is a reminder of what so many Black assistant coaches have experienced in the NFL. Often touted as next in line, in a league that has only hired three Black offensive coordinators as head coaches in its history (Hue Jackson, Jim Caldwell, and Anthony Lynn), too many have come to realize that sometimes next is never. The story of Bieniemy and Leftwich is also about the story of the pioneers. The would-be barrier breakers that were told to wait until next year. It’s the tale of Em Tunnell, Willie Wood, Jimmy Raye, and Lionel Taylor.
Forty years ago, Lionel Taylor should have been the first.
He was the first receiver to have 100 receptions in a season, had a stellar playing career from 1959-1968, and signed as receivers coach in 1970 with the Steelers. When Taylor chose coaching, the future for a Black head coach looked bleak. But Taylor remained optimistic. Although there were only three other Black assistants, Taylor said from the start he was in it to be a head coach.
“I just wanted to go into coaching. And right from the start, I have wanted to be a head coach.” [2]
He hoped his skin color would not impede his progress. He would earn a job on his own merits and always claimed he would not be anybody’s token. “I don’t want to be interviewed because I’m black,” Taylor once said. “I just don’t want to be a token interview in any sense, even as a favor to a friend. I want to be interviewed because I’m qualified. Then I’ll go against the competition. Then they can judge me.” [3] And to be honest, few were better than Lionel Taylor.
As a receivers coach, Taylor made an immediate impression wherever he landed. A Chuck Noll disciple with the Steelers, Taylor was credited for shaping Lynn Swann and John Stallworth into the best receiver tandem in the league. Taylor was an innovator. “He is the Thomas Edison of receiver coaches, inventing all kinds of games that test concentration and catching ability while taking away some of the inescapable tediousness of practice,” a LA Times writer once noted. [4]
But Taylor was so much more than a receivers coach. He was an offensive genius.
The original Bieniemy and Leftwich
As an offensive coordinator, he was Eric Bieniemy and Byron Leftwich before Eric Bieniemy and Byron Leftwich. He pushed the ball with the passing game, emphasizing spreading the ball out to whoever was open. Irv Cross, an ex-Black assistant coach who left the profession because he saw no chance for a Black man and instead turned to broadcasting said, “Lionel is like Don Coryell. He’s a master of the passing game. He’s an innovator, a gambler, always looking to hit the big play. He wants to put seven on the board on every snap.” [5]
It was Taylor’s genius and leadership that pushed the Rams to the Super Bowl in 1980. Although not the official offensive coordinator at the time of the Super Bowl—the Rams did not have coordinators that year—everyone watching knew he was the architect of the offense. The next season the Rams finally did right by him and signed him as their offensive coordinator, making him the first Black coordinator in football. After making history, the Rams smashed all previous team passing and offensive records, including touchdowns by their quarterback. In addition, they also led the league in rushing.
Like Bieniemy and Leftwich, everyone touted him as “next”. The legendary Chuck Noll, who also happened to room with Taylor for road games, said it would happen. Steelers’ President Dan Rooney said it would happen. Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom said it would happen. He was smart. He had all the leadership qualities that a head coach needed and, most importantly to the white power structure, Lionel Taylor was affable.
To whites in charge, Taylor was Black but not a 1970s “Black Power” Black. Taylor wasn’t militant but was ready to be a barrier-breaking Black pioneer. Rams’ assistant to the president, Steve Rosenbloom, who also happened to be the owner’s son, told a Black reporter who challenged the Rams for tokenism when they hired Taylor as a receivers coach in 1977 that “Lionel Taylor was hired because he is one of the most highly respected assistant coaches in the NFL and extremely capable. The fact he is black is coincidental.” [6]
Except that it wasn’t. His color counted.
He should have been the first, but as a Black man, Lionel Taylor had three strikes against him. He was honest, ambitious, and good. This made him a threat to the white power structure. As a Black man, he had no shot at a head coaching position, at least not in the immediate future. He knew it and owners knew it. Ever since he began as a receivers coach for the Steelers, when he was only one of four Black assistants in the NFL, he held a realist view that racism would hold him back. Back then he told the white media the barrier would fall in 20 years. They kept saying soon, but Taylor saw the deterrent.
Team owners.
To Taylor, the white power structure of the NFL seemed impenetrable. Sure, the Rams let him in. But it was similar to the way they let James “Shack” Harris in. They could help them win ballgames, but they would never be the face of the franchise. The owners were not ready for a Black man to truly lead, and Taylor was not afraid to tell it like it was. “You look in the stands at an NFL game. How many blacks do you see? Not many. An owner has to consider how that audience will react to a black head coach…. That’s why I was never that optimistic about a black getting the shot.” [7]
He might have been pessimistic like every Black person who believed they were being passed up by inferior white counterparts, but he was persistent. His ambition was to do the unthinkable and become a head coach. “I want to be a head coach,” said Taylor forty years ago. “No ifs, ands or buts about it.” [8] But that ambition was also the problem. Rams head coach Ray Malavasi applauded Taylor’s ambition, but he also recognized the obvious. Taylor was the architect of the Rams aerial assault. Taylor was the one the media called an innovator and the one who everyone said was next. Next in line for an NFL job, but more specifically, next in line for the Rams gig. After the Rams went 6-10 in 1981, rumors circulated that Malavasi would be gone. Instead, he fired his entire staff, Taylor included. And Malavasi kept his job.
Dream deferred but not eliminated
To Lionel Taylor, the message was loud and clear.
The NFL was not ready for a Black head coach, especially one touted as an offensive innovator. So he entered the college ranks, first as a receivers coach at Oregon State and next settling for a head coaching job at Texas Southern. They could not keep Taylor around. Every year they did him wrong, he stood as a symbol of their racism.
Perhaps he was just too threatening to the white coaches who get to swim in those superlatives? That gnawed at Taylor.
“I know of many white coaches who have failed or lost and still stayed in the business,” he once said. [9] Another time he added, “It’s a real shame because I had success. I proved I could do the job. But how many white coaches have failed time and time again in that league, only to end up getting hired again as a head coach somewhere else? After a while, you just get tired of it. You get worn down.” [10]
As the years went by, the reality of the situation entrenched itself further in Taylor’s mind. In 1985 he complained, “I look at some of the people being hired, and I know I’m just as qualified. It hurts, but what can you do?” [11]
By accepting the Texas Southern job, the only job he could get, it also signaled his NFL career was over. Although the NFL accepted the tan talent from HBCUs, they’d never give a coach from those ranks a chance. Legends like Eddie Robinson, John Merritt, and Jake Gaither, who turned over future Hall of Famers to the league, were afterthoughts. Taylor, whose teams struggled at Texas Southern, did not return to the NFL until 1989 when he signed as a receivers coach with the Browns to work under Bud Carson.
Carson’s career highlights the conflict Taylor felt in his heart that his skin color held him back. Carson, who was white, came into the pro coaching ranks in 1972 with the Steelers, two years after Taylor. He was known for his legendary defenses that he built in Pittsburgh and for the Rams. In fact, when the Rams fired Taylor in 1982, they also fired Carson. But Carson stayed in the league as a defensive coordinator for three teams before he finally received his head coaching job with the Browns in 1989. When they fired him a year later, Carson had no problem finding work as a defensive coordinator. In contrast, Taylor, like Black Americans during the war years who had to travel to Europe to avoid American racism and serve, also had to go to Europe for his big chance. In 1996, he finally became a head coach, leading the London Monarchs in NFL Europe.
During his time of being the next guy, Taylor said something prophetic.
“Lots of times,” Taylor told a reporter, “the guy who laid the foundation doesn’t even get to live in the house.”
Taylor laid the foundation for Eric Bieniemy and Byron Leftwich, and it’s up to the white owners to let these men finally build their own teams.
Footnotes:
[1] “The Last Color Line,” Philadelphia News, November 11, 1981.
[2] “Black Head Coach? Taylor is Closest,” Los Angeles Times, February 10, 1980.
[3] “Rams Aides Are Ready When Time Comes,” Los Angeles Times, August 6, 1981.
[4] “The NFL Quota Seems to be 0,” Los Angeles Times, August 16, 1978.
[5] “The Last Color Line,” Philadelphia News, November 11, 1981.
[6] “Prying Pye,” Los Angeles Sentinel, July 14, 1977.
[7] “The Last Color Line,” Philadelphia News, November 11, 1981.
[8] “Rams Aides Are Ready When Time Comes,” Los Angeles Times, August 6, 1981.
[9] “Only Whites Need Apply,” Los Angeles Times, January 30, 1983.
[10] “Blacks Still Await Their Shot,” New York Daily News, March 23, 1986.
[11] “Perhaps One of These Will be Black Trend-Setter,” Fort Lauderdale News, June 2, 1985.
