Todd Bowles blew it with his comments about representation in coaching
Look, it’s absolutely unfair.
It’s unfair that Todd Bowles, Mike Tomlin or even Lovie Smith have to answer questions like these. It’s not these men fault the NFL has a problem with hiring black (or minority) coaches.
Before his week 6 matchup with Mike Tomlin and the Pittsburgh Steelers, Todd Bowles was asked about the impact of representation and what it would mean for aspiring minority coaches. His response?
“Well, when you say, ‘They see you guys,’ and ‘look like them and grew up like them,’ it means that we’re oddballs to begin with,” Bowles said. “I think the minute you guys stop making a big deal about it, everybody else will as well.”
The NFL’s first inaugural season of football occurred in 1920 and despite the fact that there have been over 500 NFL head coaches (full time and interim), there has only been 24 black head coaches. So unfortunately Coach Bowles, not talking about the issue won’t cure the issue.
The first black head coach in NFL history was Fritz Pollard, who coached the Akron Zips in 1921 and the Hammond Pros in 1925. There wouldn’t be another black man hired as a head NFL coach until Art Shell was hired by the Los Angeles Raiders in 1989. Over the next 13 years, only 6 of the 91 new head coaching hires were black:
· Dennis Green (Minnesota Vikings, 1992)
· Ray Rhodes (Philadelphia Eagles, 1995)
· Tony Dungy (Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 1996)
· Terry Robiskie (Washington Redskins, weeks 15–18 2000)
· Herm Edwards (New York Jets, 2001)
Immediately after the implementation of the Rooney Rule in 2003, Jerry Jones satisfied his Rooney Rule requirement by giving the recently fired Dennis Green an NFL head coaching interview over the phone, after he interviewed Bill Parcells for five hours on a jet at the New Jersey airport. That same offseason, the Detroit Lions hired Steve Mariucci without interviewing any minority candidates. Lions GM Matt Millen and owner William Ford Jr. stated the minority candidates they approached all turn down interviews because they felt the Mariucci hire was already written in stone. The Lions were handed a $200,000 fine and remain the only team to be fined in relation to the Rooney Rule.
In the nearly twenty years since the inception of the Rooney Rule, black coaches have been aware of sham interviews. Despite sounding good on the surface, the Rooney Rule quickly just became a box to check in the hiring process. Brian Flores might have been one of the first NFL head coaches to openly attach his name to the idea and expose it, but other black coaches such as Anthony Lynn and Maurice Carthon have shared their experiences as well.
The NFL has done a tremendous job of giving off the appearance of caring while also passing off the blame to the owners, basically saying that the league can’t tell the teams who they should hire. Whether it’s true or not, that’s their story and they are sticking to it. They did implement a rule for the 2022 NFL season that every NFL team must have a minority assistant on their staff.
“You don’t want to take a job to take a job,” he said. “I felt like I did that the first time around. It’s a two-way street. Other than the racism, you’ve got to go through the offensive [coaches] and the system, whether they know you well enough. Or what they’re looking for. There are a lot more general managers hired now and there are more package deals than there have been in the past. You hire a GM from another team, you pretty much know who they’re going to hire. If you don’t do the interview, you’re ‘ignorant.’ If you do do the interview, you know at some point when it’s a token interview.”
In a piece for the NFL’s official website written by Judy Battista, Bowles touched on some of his thoughts regarding this past offseason’s hiring cycle. Despite already winning a Super Bowl ring in 2020 as the defensive coordinator for the Bucs, Bowles and offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich, were left without head coaching jobs. For a second, it looked like there was a chance for Byron to become the next head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars, but it didn’t see he was comfortable with general manager Trent Baalke still holding that position and talks eventually fell apart. Just seven years prior in 2015, Bowles was hired by the New York Jets to lead them back to success in the post Rex Ryan era. Despite winning 10 games in his first season and narrowly missing the playoffs, the Todd Bowles coaching era would end after three consecutive losing seasons in 2018. While some of Bowles coaching decisions can and should have been criticized, he just didn’t have the talent. Having to rely on Ryan Fitzpatrick, Josh McCown, Bryce Petty and a rookie Sam Darnold to lead your team can be a tough task for anyone to overcome.
It’s a rare sight to see black head coaches take over teams that aren’t in a rebuilding phase. With this second head coaching stint, Todd Bowles joins Mike Tomlin (2007) and Jim Caldwell (2009) as coaches who were hired to lead championship caliber teams that had franchise quarterbacks. Tomlin has reached the Super Bowl twice, including one win. Caldwell reached the Super Bowl as a rookie head coach in 2009, losing to the New Orleans Saints. Caldwell would only coach the Colts for three seasons, thanks in large part to losing Peyton Manning to a neck injury in 2011 which would see him sidelined all season. He was able to get that second chance at being a head coach, this time in 2014 with the Detroit Lions. Despite winning .563% of his games and reaching the playoffs twice, the team decided to part ways with him. Look, I won’t question them for wanting to get the team to the next level. Caldwell built the Lions into something respectable, but they just needed to get over the hump. Unfortunately the hires of Matt Patricia and then Dan Campbell have yet to yield any positive returns for the Lions.
Coaches like Raheem Morris, Byron Leftwich, Pep Hamilton and so many more currently coordinating NFL offenses and defense’s deserve their shot at leading an NFL franchise. They’ve done the work and they have the resume’s to back it up. For the coaches of yesterday like Sherman Lewis who never got their opportunity, nobody should be quiet about the subject.
