Welcome to The Signal, Box Score's Wednesday newsletter. Last week, we revealed where USMNT coach Mauricio Pochettino will find players for the 2030 World Cup team. This week, we're looking at how the pipeline for NFL head coaches has changed and what that means for Black head coaching candidates.
In a recent NFL preseason game, Antwaan Randle El, a 46-year-old former wide receiver in the league, called the offensive plays for the Chicago Bears during the second half of a 34-10 win over the Cleveland Browns. Randle El, the Bears wide receivers coach, is not the normal play caller. But in this experiment, his head coach, Ben Johnson, an offensive guru and the regular play caller, let him take over the call sheet. With no prior experience calling plays in the NFL, Randle El led the Bears to a 24-0 run in a stretch that included 12 first downs and 235 yards.
“I think he's got a chance to be an offensive coordinator in this league,” Johnson said after the game. “I think he's got a chance to be a head coach in this league. I think he would do a phenomenal job in both those respects, and I don't know if he gets that type of credit around the league right now. So it's a good opportunity for him to get some recognition.”
If Randle El is to ever become an NFL head coach, he will almost certainly have to become an offensive coordinator first. In the last NFL hiring cycle that ended after the 2025-26 season, six out of the 10 new hires came from the offensive side of the football. Of the 32 current NFL head coaches, roughly 70% come from an offensive background with the remainder coming from defensive or special teams backgrounds.
But in a league that will field just three Black NFL head coaches for the upcoming 2026 season, Randle El, who had a nine-year playing career with the Steelers and the Commanders, faces steep odds of becoming an offensive coordinator despite the glowing remarks of his boss. Eric Bieniemy, back with the Kansas City Chiefs for a second stint as the offensive coordinator, is the only person in that position in the league this season who identifies as an African American. But his boss, Andy Reid, calls the plays.
For a period during the Chiefs’ two Super Bowl victories with him on the coaching staff, Bieniemy took one interview after another for vacant NFL head coaching jobs, but he never was promoted. When Black coaches do get the head coaching jobs in the league, they primarily come from defensive backgrounds. This season’s three Black coaches — Aaron Glenn, Todd Bowles and DeMeco Ryans — were promoted to head coaching positions after serving as defensive coordinators. Since 1990, there have been 27 African Americans hired as full-time NFL head coaches. Of that number, only six (Art Shell, Dennis Green, Jim Caldwell, Anthony Lynn, Hue Jackson and David Culley) have come from offensive backgrounds.
Over the years, the league’s Rooney Rule has required teams to interview diverse candidates for head coaching, coordinator and general manager positions, but these interviews have often served as perfunctory measures of compliance rather than sincere efforts to hire African Americans in leadership positions. Patrick Graham, the Steelers defensive coordinator, revealed recently in an ESPN interview that he was stood up for dinner by Jacksonville Jaguars executives during an interview process because they were busy finalizing terms with their eventual new head coach, Liam Coen.
“It just made me think, like, ‘Damn, I haven't done enough,’” Graham told ESPN. “Football is pretty high on my priority list. And it felt like the thing that I hold in the highest regard let me down and crushed me.”
Graham is one of 11 current Black defensive coordinators in a league that is 54% Black. From Tony Dungy to Ray Rhodes to Mike Tomlin to DeMeco Ryans, the league has been able to develop successful Black defensive coaches, but it’s been far less successful doing so with their offensive counterparts. It’s not surprising that if offensive coaches are the preferred candidates for NFL front offices then the league would struggle to fill leadership roles with the best Black candidates.
Last year, amid the Trump administration crackdown on DEI programs, the NFL suspended a program that made it mandatory that all 32 teams hire a minority coach as an offensive assistant. In an ongoing 2022 class action lawsuit against the NFL for racial discrimination, Brian Flores, the Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator, asked the league to require teams to have “either a Black QB Coach or assistant QB Coach to ensure a pipeline of experienced candidates for Offensive Coordinator and Head Coach positions.”
Perhaps, instead of mandating this pipeline, which might only serve to further stoke debates around DEI, the league could begin developing pipelines for offensive assistants as early as the high school level, where many coaches have their first experiences in game planning and player development. No team should hire a coach simply because of the color of his skin, but the NFL does have a responsibility to eradicate obstacles to a level playing field for all coaches. Organizations like the National Coalition of Minority Football Coaches are doing important work to help minority coaches with all phases of the business, but they can’t alone overcome institutional barriers of a behemoth like the NFL that has entrenched systems codified over generations with owners that operate independently of the league office.
Antwaan Randle El deserves more opportunities to control the call sheet in NFL games, whether it’s for the Bears or another team. His chances to manage the clock should come more than just during an occasional experiment in a preseason game, but also in pressure situations with the game on the line. But first minority coaches like him, who make up nearly 40% of all offensive assistants in the NFL, need the opportunity to progress from position coaches to play callers to earn the attention of NFL front offices looking for the next Sean McVay or Matt LaFleur. 🏈
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