Minority candidates are 0-for-29 in offensive coordinator hires

The current assault on DEI programs is as ingenious as it is insidious. By ridiculing efforts to give everyone a fair shake, it justifies giving those who would benefit most from diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts an unfair shake.

Should employment decisions be based solely on merit? Yes. Is DEI meant to address the reality that the raw data generated by supposedly merit-based hires suggest some groups get the benefit of the doubt when assessing merit and others don't? Absolutely. And now that DEI has morphed into a straight-faced slur that can be used without fear of cancellation, some are conflating merit with majority.

Common sense, as applied to those stubborn things known as facts, indicates otherwise.

As it relates to the hiring of minority candidates for the position of NFL offensive coordinator — the proverbial on-deck circle for most head-coaching jobs — the last 29 have gone to white coaches. That’s the number as tabulated by Jarrett Bell of USA Today.

Twenty-nine in a row.

"It continues to be an eyesore,” Fritz Pollard Alliance executive director Rod Graves told Bell.

"We could have stood at this point last year, after last year’s hiring cycle, and looked down the road and expected we were going to still have issues because we’re not seeing any growth in the offensive room," Graves told Bell. "We’re not seeing growth in terms of diversity, when it comes to offensive assistants, quarterback coaches. That’s where the growth has to be apparent, before we get to offensive coordinators."

As to the hiring of head coaches, one of seven jobs in the 2025 cycle went to minority candidates.

“Take a good look at defenses in the NFL and even in the SEC — most of them outstrip the percentage of Black athletes in these leagues, with some teams starting 100% Black players!” sociologist Harry Edwards told Bell. "We can decipher offenses and react amazingly to them, but we can’t coach offenses?"

The offense/defense coaching dichotomy is becoming the modern equivalent to the outdated justification for not giving Black players a chance to play quarterback. For decades, that was football's primary version of the ridiculously outdated thinking that got baseball executive Al Campanis canned (the precursor to "canceled") in the late 1980s.

"We still need to turn attention to the commitment of ownership, and the commitment of teams to really level the playing field,” Graves told Bell.

With two of the supposedly co-equal branches of government not currently in the mood to even acknowledge such issues, it leaves the task of ensuring fairness to the courts. Enter the Brian Flores litigation. Unfortunately, the league's obsession with its secret, rigged, kangaroo court of arbitration has left the lawsuit brought by Flores, Steve Wilks, and Ray Horton stuck at square one. For more than three years.

“Nobody’s asking for quotas, or anything along those lines,” Graves told Bell. “We just want a system where we all feel like we’ve got a shot when we put in the work."

The only way to get the NFL and its owners to provide a fair shot to all candidates is to show them that the failure to do so will have significant financial consequences. Not from the customers, since few of them care. But from the state, federal, and local laws crafted in the '60s to ensure that, when it's time to make hiring and firing decisions, certain protected characteristics would not be conscious or subconscious factors in the process.

Until those who are rich and getting richer every day are held accountable before a truly independent judge and a truly independent jury in a truly independent court with no connective tissue to 345 Park Avenue, nothing will change. Especially not in the current executive and legislative climate. And definitely not among pockets of fringe media that will undoubtedly react to any effort to bring attention to the problem with ridicule and whatabout-ism.

Get ready for the pushback to Bell's article, this one, and any others that raise the current 0-for-29 streak. And we already know what one of the first questions will be.

wHeRe aRe aLL tHe wHiTe cOrNErBacKs?

Let's see if they ever get around to addressing the core question. How does merit-based hiring result in 29 non-minority candidates in a row getting offensive coordinator jobs?