I Don't Understand The NFL Coaching Hunt
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| bleacherreport.com // Mike McCarthy (Left) and Jerry Jones (Right) [Dallas Cowboys] |
When you are trying to get into college, the biggest factor in determining whether or not you get admitted is your academic successes. When you apply for a job, your experiences and qualifications are key, but even more so is the level of success that you have (or haven't) had in recent occupations. That job you apply to may call your former employer to get an idea of what kind of employee you are. The feedback they get plays a big role in what the potential employer ultimately decides. In the NFL, however, that part of the process is almost completely unnecessary. Since college and professional league games are broadcast all around, owners and management can see what results all these potential candidates have brought about in present time. Knowing all this, you would expect that these organizations would look to employ only the most outstanding coaches to lead their respective teams right? Well apparently, that doesn't seem to be the case.
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| www.northjersey.com // Joe Judge [New York Giants] |
Joe Judge was just hired to become the next head coach of the New York Giants. He was the Special Teams coordinator and Wide Receivers coach of the New England Patriots. Mike McCarthy, whose last coaching stint ended about as poorly as it could have back in Green Bay, was just hired by the Dallas Cowboys to be their next head coach. Last offseason, Matt LaFleur, the then Offensive Coordinator of what was a bottom tier offense in Tennessee with the Titans, landed the head coaching gig with the Packers. Kliff Kingsbury, who was the head coach of a sub .500 Football program at Texas Tech beforehand, was a heavily sought after coaching candidate last year; he went on to settle down with the Cardinals.
I bring up these names, not because I think they're all bad coaches or particularly bad hires, but because given the results each of the aforementioned individuals posited in their previous occupations, a promotion was not warranted. You don't finish near the bottom of your class and get admitted into a collegiate program over someone who finished near the top of theirs. But in the NFL, it seems that we are seeing more instances of that, and it confuses me. Who knows? Maybe Joe Judge will prove to be exactly what New York needed, Mike McCarthy has won a Super Bowl as a head coach before, Kliff Kingsbury showed promise in his first year in Arizona, and the Packers won 13 games under Matt LaFleur in his first year at the helm.
My question isn't so much about why these guys got the job, but more so about why the more outstanding candidates didn't.
Guys who I'd say have established themselves as top tier head coaching candidates didn't land any of the available jobs: Ravens offensive coordinator Greg Roman, Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy, and Bills defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier, among others, are all still with their current teams, appearing to have gotten minimal interest from other organizations. While as far as continuity is concerned, this is a great revelation for the teams each coach is currently employed by, it is off-putting for me, fans of the other teams who went into an early offseason in need of a new head coach, and probably some of these head coaching hopefuls themselves (like the ones just mentioned), that they are being passed up on for who on paper seem like lesser candidates.
All that said, I'm not really criticizing the hires that were made. I mean I kind of am, but not so directly. I just don't know what to make of it. Were the coaches I brought up asking for too much in their interviews (assuming they were interviewed) ? Did they actually get offered some jobs and ultimately reject them? Again, this isn't me saying that Kevin Stefanski to the Browns, Judge to the Giants, McCarthy to the Cowboys, or any of the hirings made were bad ones. It's too early to tell. Maybe some work out. Maybe they all work. Maybe none of them work. I don't know. What I do know is that there were plenty of coaches across the league who looked primed for and were very deserving of a head coaching promotion given how the units they led performed throughout the season, and none of them were granted the opportunity. All I'm asking here is for an explanation as to why that is.
Of course there is another dimension to this apparent issue, one that is far more divisive. Today, the "Rooney Rule" looks like a joke. None of the coaching vacancies across the league were filled in by the hiring of a minority, with the exception of Ron Rivera to the Washington Redskins. This turnout did spark some criticism towards the league, and to a point, justifiably so. As I mentioned earlier, guys like Eric Bieniemy and Leslie Frazier are some of the candidates who I thought earned the opportunity to be a head coach. Moreover, someone like Marvin Lewis, who was interviewed only by the Dallas Cowboys, is another coach who I think has earned the right to at least be someone's defensive coordinator if nothing else. Unfortunately, each of them were left either unemployed, or stuck in the coordinator role they were already in.
Now I say the criticism is justified to a point because I don't think every single owner went into the coaching hunt with the intent to only hire white coaches, it just happened to be how it worked out. If you task me with developing a business startup and told me to put together a group of the smartest, most businesses-savvy people that I think can get the job done, and everyone I bring in is black (like me), you may get the idea that I was being biased. You'd be right to feel that way, but that is only a potential explanation, it could just be the case that those I bring in are actually the best candidates I could have found, it just so happened that they were all black.
Now I'm not saying that this is what happened with the NFL, but it's a possibility. After the way the league attempted to quell the situation following the excommunicated Collin Kaepernick, it would be easy to vilify the owners across the league as well as the commissioner in this instance, labeling this as another act of prejudice. However, I think in this specific case we ought to fall back on the racially driven criticisms. To my knowledge, the number of Caucasian coaches in the NFL and NCAA still far outnumber that of those who are African American. Conclusively, despite the positive strides pertaining to equality and diversity that have been made over the years in the NFL and sports in general, there are historical feats of past times that still loom about. However, when such feats occur, like white coaches filling up most of the coaching vacancies in the NFL in the 2020 offseason, we shouldn't immediately view it as step backwards from those strides, but rather as one solitary instance, involving a set of intentional actions with unintended social offenses in play.
Having said that, the uneasy reception to the hires that were made are part of the reason for the uproar about minorities not getting these jobs, seeing as how the new coaches weren't all that successful in their previous stints, which points back to my original point of emphasis. The new coaching hires in the NFL come off as lackluster in most cases, and given the outstanding candidates that were available (some of whom were minorities), it begs the question as to why exactly those that were hired got the opportunity instead.
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My question isn't so much about why these guys got the job, but more so about why the more outstanding candidates didn't.
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| pressboxonline.com // Greg Roman [Baltimore Ravens] |
All that said, I'm not really criticizing the hires that were made. I mean I kind of am, but not so directly. I just don't know what to make of it. Were the coaches I brought up asking for too much in their interviews (assuming they were interviewed) ? Did they actually get offered some jobs and ultimately reject them? Again, this isn't me saying that Kevin Stefanski to the Browns, Judge to the Giants, McCarthy to the Cowboys, or any of the hirings made were bad ones. It's too early to tell. Maybe some work out. Maybe they all work. Maybe none of them work. I don't know. What I do know is that there were plenty of coaches across the league who looked primed for and were very deserving of a head coaching promotion given how the units they led performed throughout the season, and none of them were granted the opportunity. All I'm asking here is for an explanation as to why that is.
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| www.cincyjungle.com // Eric Bieniemy [Kansas City Chiefs] |
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| www.buffalorumblings.com // Leslie Frazier [Buffalo Bills] |
Now I'm not saying that this is what happened with the NFL, but it's a possibility. After the way the league attempted to quell the situation following the excommunicated Collin Kaepernick, it would be easy to vilify the owners across the league as well as the commissioner in this instance, labeling this as another act of prejudice. However, I think in this specific case we ought to fall back on the racially driven criticisms. To my knowledge, the number of Caucasian coaches in the NFL and NCAA still far outnumber that of those who are African American. Conclusively, despite the positive strides pertaining to equality and diversity that have been made over the years in the NFL and sports in general, there are historical feats of past times that still loom about. However, when such feats occur, like white coaches filling up most of the coaching vacancies in the NFL in the 2020 offseason, we shouldn't immediately view it as step backwards from those strides, but rather as one solitary instance, involving a set of intentional actions with unintended social offenses in play.
Having said that, the uneasy reception to the hires that were made are part of the reason for the uproar about minorities not getting these jobs, seeing as how the new coaches weren't all that successful in their previous stints, which points back to my original point of emphasis. The new coaching hires in the NFL come off as lackluster in most cases, and given the outstanding candidates that were available (some of whom were minorities), it begs the question as to why exactly those that were hired got the opportunity instead.
Thanks for reading. Remember to Subscribe and Share.
Twitter: @WeAreSPRTSVille
IG: @sportsville1
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