KANSAS CITY, Mo. — On Super Bowl week’s opening night in downtown Phoenix, a particular crowd of reporters ignored a gallery of star players centered inside Footprint Center and instead migrated to the corner to surround one of the Chiefs’ assistant coaches.
For more than an hour there, Eric Bieniemy answered questions that tiptoed or delved right into the same topic — the topic for which, ironically, he has not been able to provide a real answer for the past half-decade.
Why can’t you get a head coaching job?
The elephant in the room is the face that stared back at them. You don’t need me to tell you the NFL has a race problem, and if you do, me saying so isn’t going to change your mind.
Bieniemy did not request to be the face of this storyline, but it’s traveled to him and latched on for a half-decade.
Rather than leaving it behind, he now takes it with him to the nation’s capital.
Bieniemy, passed up for head coaching jobs in Indianapolis, New Orleans, Denver, Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles, Jacksonville, New York, Houston, the other New York, Carolina, Cleveland, the first New York again, Miami, Cincinnati and Tampa Bay, is headed for a lateral move in Washington D.C.
To be honest, I believe it’s more than his skin color that has led to this prolonged journey that still doesn’t have the end Bieniemy desires. But it’s the NFL’s own race statistics that drive this narrative, and that’s their problem.
They’ve put themselves in this mess — a bind in which they are not afforded the benefit of the doubt — and they deserve to sit in it. A league whose player workforce is 70% Black employs just three Black head coaches.
It’s an embarrassing statistic, and if that means that every subsequent qualified Black man passed over for a bigger job — or, ahem, 15 of them — draws national skepticism, criticism and scorn, that’s on them, not you or me. And I’m not about to feel sorry for them.
Truth? There are some valid questions about the kind of head coach Bieniemy would be — same as there are with most candidates. There has never been a clear enough explanation for all that his role in Kansas City entails. This is Andy Reid’s offense, Andy Reid’s scheme and Andy Reid’s play-calling. Well, we think. Teams these days are looking for more than a “leader of men” in their next head coach. Of course, that hasn’t mattered much for his predecessors.
Truth? There is healthy skepticism that a lot of coaches could enjoy riding shotgun to Andy Reid in an offense quarterbacked by Patrick Mahomes. Matt Nagy and Doug Pederson were both fortunate enough to skip the stride that Bieniemy will step into next, but that’s never been the apples-to-apples comparison some want it to be. Yes, they occupied the same literal position under Reid, but they piloted offenses that placed Alex Smith at quarterback, not Patrick Mahomes. When an owner looks at the potential fit, it has to cross his mind at some point that: Well, our offense doesn’t have THAT quarterback.
All first-time head coaching hires, however, require some form of a leap of faith, and NFL owners have been more willing to put their faith in the men who look like them. That’s what the numbers not only suggest but evince.
And so it is the Black men — the Eric Bieniemys — who must prove themselves a little bit more than their counterparts. Or a lot more than their counterparts.
While acknowledging the holes in the Bieniemy resume, the real point is that most candidates are not required to check every box. The NFL’s race problem is often viewed too simplistically as keeping minorities down. Often too, though, it is the absence of lifting them up.
They are not the subjects of those leaps of faith but rather those who are leaped over, time and time again.
An offensive coordinator for a two-time Super Bowl champion who has never fallen shy of a reaching at least the AFC Championship Game cannot find a promotion, and believe me, he’s scoured the country for one. His offenses have never rated lower than third overall in Football Outsiders’ DVOA metric.
So Bieniemy must leave a job with the best team in football for the same job with a team that has made the playoffs once in the past seven seasons — all to prove what many owners would probably deem he already proved in Kansas City should he have a different color of skin.
I don’t know that Bieniemy will be a good head coach. I do know that he has a reputation of not interviewing well — that he doesn’t always say the right thing. I also know there are worse backgrounds that lead to head coaching jobs.
But Black men must jump through every hoop, not just the important ones or the ones that provide the best organizational fit. That’s essentially what Bieniemy has afforded himself with his move to the East Coast — the chance to jump through a couple more hoops that exist only for people like him. It will be his offense in Washington, his scheme and his playcalling. And he will not have Patrick Mahomes as his quarterback.
If he succeeds, then what? Do more hoops await on the other side?
Part of the issue is the NFL’s unwillingness to admit the gravity of the issue — the extent to which race plays a factor in this job, general manager jobs, even jobs within its own media empire.
That’s what prompts not only the immediate skepticism but long-term distrust — because even if there is ultimately real rationale behind closed doors to leave Bieniemy out of the club of 32, there is no rationale for having only three Black men in that club.
The NFL earns the consequences of those numbers until they fix them.
We should applaud Bieniemy for trying a new route. He is choosing ambition over the collection of rings to come in KC. And the next time he’s interviewed for a head coaching job, those on the other side of the table should trust the actions over nitpicking at the words.
This is a sign that he’s supremely confident in his own ability.
And there’s something to be said for that.
He is doing what the NFL owners will not — taking a leap of faith on Eric Bieniemy.
