Rise in NFL Offense Has Led to Decrease in Hiring of Minority Coaches

As has become apparent by head coach hirings in the NFL offseason, teams are desperately searching for their own version of LA Rams coach Sean McVay.

McVay is young, he’s charismatic and he’s offensive – in a good way.

A former offensive coordinator who worked his way up from lesser roles like tight ends coach, McVay has guided the Rams to the Super Bowl in just his second season at the helm so it makes sense other teams want to hire someone who has followed a similar path.

That’s an issue for minority coaches as an analysis by the AP of coaching staffs for the 2018 season found just four minorities in the stepping-stone positions of offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. Overall, that’s 7.1 percent of 56 possible jobs.

What that means is while there is a strong pipeline of young offensive coaches who are primed to take head coaching gigs one day – McVay’s 35-year-old quarterbacks coach Zac Taylor should be the next head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals – very few of them are minorities.

However, the NFL is a trendy league so it’s possible that if young offensive hires like Taylor don’t pan out, the league will shift again in favor of hiring from coaching positions that are filled more heavily by minorities.

“I think it is cyclical,” said former NFL coach Tony Dungy. “I also think a lot of owners don’t know or understand what goes into being a successful head coach. If I coach my quarterback really well I will have a good team, of course, and they feel the guy who coaches the quarterback really will be a successful head coach, but we have seen that’s not necessarily the case. For every Doug Pederson or Sean McVay, who are great, we see (many) who don’t work out.”