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The NFL will require every team to hire an assistant offensive coach or woman for the 2022 season.
As part of their diversity efforts, NFL owners passed a policy allowing the coach to be “a woman or a member of an ethnic or racial minority.” The coach signs a one-year contract and is paid from a league-wide fund.
The head coach and offensive staff must work closely with the minority or female coach.
“It’s a recognition that right now when you look at the stepping stones for a head coach, that’s coordinator positions,” Steelers owner Art Rooney II, the chairman of the NFL’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, said of Kevin Seifert from ESPN. “We clearly have a trend in recent years for coaches to come from the offensive side of the ball and we clearly don’t have that many minorities in the offense coordinator [job].”
Teams like the Buccaneers that already have a minority or female coaches or coaches serving as offensive assistants already meet the policy’s requirement.
But it’s the first hiring mandate in the history of the Rooney Rule.
The league also expanded the language of the Rooney Rule to include women at all levels. It will now state that women and/or people of color can meet the requirement to interview two external minorities for top positions, including the head coach.
Teams are not required to interview a woman, but women are now included in the fulfillment process.
“The truth is, at least to this day, there aren’t many women in the pool as head coaches,” Rooney said. “We hope that will change over the years, but for that reason we did not see it as a constraint on the number of ethnic minority interviews at the time. Of course we can address this over time, but at the moment we didn’t see that as a problem.
“Really, we’re probably looking at the early stages of women’s entry into the coaching ranks, so we may still be a little way before that becomes an issue.”