PALM BEACH, Fla. — All 32 NFL teams will hire an offensive minority assistant coach for the 2022 season, part of a series of policy improvements announced Monday to address the league’s ongoing diversity efforts.
The coach may be “a woman or a member of an ethnic or racial minority,” per policy adopted by the NFL owners during their annual meeting, and is paid from a league-wide fund. The coach must work closely with the head coach and the offense staff with the goal of increasing minority participation in the pool of offense coaches that will eventually produce the most desirable candidates for head coaching positions.
“It’s a recognition that right now, when you look at the stepping stones for a head coach, it’s the coordinator positions,” said Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney II, the chairman of the NFL’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee. “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].”
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Some teams already have a coach or coach in similar assistant roles that count toward the program, NFL administrator Dasha Smith said. But the requirement for all teams represents the first hiring mandate in the history of the Rooney Rule, named after Art Rooney’s father and aimed to increase minority hiring at all levels of the league.
Progress has been made in some areas, notably general managers and defensive coordinators, but there are only five head coaches in the league who are in a minority. Commissioner Roger Goodell said in February that the league had “missed” on its targets during the 2022 head coach hiring cycle and vowed to redouble efforts this offseason.
In addition to the offensive assistant coach mandate, the league also has:
• Added women to Rooney Rule language at all levels. It will now state that women and/or people of color can meet the requirement to interview two outside minorities for top positions, including head coaches. Women do not need to be interviewed but are now included in the fulfillment process. It’s possible for a team to interview two white women for an open head coaching position to satisfy the Rooney Rule, and then find a hire without ever interviewing a person of color. But from a practical standpoint, Rooney said, that’s unlikely.
“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 consider it a restraint on the number of racial minority interviews at this time. Of course we can address that over time, but for now 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 maybe we’re still a little way off before that becomes an issue.”
• Publishing a mission statement to encourage and attract diverse members of potential ownership groups. The statement read in part, “Membership will consider it a positive and significant factor if the group includes diverse individuals who would have significant equity interest in and commitment to the club, including serving as controlling owner of the club.”
The declaration does not require minority participation in ownership groups. The Denver Broncos will be the first test case. You are in the process of evaluating interested investors for your sales process. Rooney said it was his understanding that several of the groups had minority ownership.
• Announcing a Diversity Advisory Committee as part of Goodell’s commitment to invite outside experts to assess the league’s diversity. Among its six members is former Houston Texans general manager Rick Smith. They also include former New Jersey Attorney General Peter Harvey and Pamela Carlton, the founder and president of Springboard.
Goodell had raised the possibility of scrapping the Rooney Rule entirely and starting over, but Dasha Smith said it remains effective in several areas.
“It’s been very helpful overall to our diversity efforts,” she said. “While we haven’t seen the results we’d certainly desire with the head coaching position, we’ve seen results this season that showed progress, particularly in the defensive coordinator roles.”
League-record 15 minorities are among the NFL’s defensive coordinators for 2022, according to league data. Overall, minority coaches now make up 39% of the overall league, up from 35% in 2021. There is also a league-record 12 women on the coaching staff.