As the NFL opened another season earlier this month, eight of the NFL’s 32 teams featured a minority head coach, which tied for the most in league history. The Rooney Rule – which requires teams to interview at least one minority candidate for open head coaching and senior football operation roles – has seen a number of minorities climb the NFL coaching ladder in the past two decades.



The NFL’s coaching ranks still look nothing like its player base – 75% of NFL head coaches are white, compared to less than 30% of the players.

Since the Rooney Rule has been implemented, a new racial divide has opened up: Minority coaches have had more success finding jobs on defense, while white coaches are preferred for their expertise on offense. Of the eight minority head coaches to start this season, three-quarters of them have predominantly defensive backgrounds. In contrast, two thirds of the rest of the league’s head coaches come from offensive backgrounds.

And this is not a one-off: Since 2003, white coaches with a background in offense have outnumbered those with a defensive background in all but three years.

The racial disparity between the offensive and defensive side of the ball does not stop with head coaches. Of the 32 offensive coordinators on opening weekend, 31 were white, while a record 12 minority defensive coordinators marched the sideline. Why has this rise in minority coaches come from just one side of the ball?

The simplest answer is that the distribution of players on each side of the ball is similarly lopsided. At every single defensive position, at least 74% of players were black as recently as 2014, per the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (Tides). At only two offensive positions – running back and wide receiver – were those numbers replicated on the offensive side.

At the other five offensive positions recorded by Tides – quarterback, tight end, offensive guard, offensive tackle, and center at least 40 percent of players were white. While there have been minor fluctuations, that data has stayed more or less consistent in the 15 years for which Tides collected data. Considering a vast majority of coordinators are NFL veterans, it should come as no surprise that those splits are reflected in the coaching ranks as well.

Even though you won’t catch scouts and organizational decision-makers saying race factors into who is drafted to play what position, most football followers, from youth leagues all the way up to the NFL, have an idea of what players at each position should embody. Wide receivers need speed and height; running backs need burst and toughness; quarterbacks need savvy and intelligence; centers need to be the brain of the offensive line.

Most of these players are pushed into these roles well before the NFL even knows they exist. There hasn’t been a white NFL cornerback since Jason Sehorn back in 2003. Vanderbilt University head coach Derek Mason – an African-American who spent his NFL days as a wide receiver, primarily for the Titans and Ravens – told the Undefeated they don’t even exist in the high school ranks. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen one. I’m talking years. If I see a 6ft 2in dude out there who can play corner, who has got great hips and can move, I’ll take him. I don’t care what color he is. They’re just not there.”



It’s not a coincidence that these positional differences are split by racial lines. In his seminal 1973 work Sociology of Sport, Dr Harry Edwards outlines a concept called centrality, which shows how players of most importance – those who touch the ball most and make executive decisions – play in the most central positions.

In baseball, he found a simple solution to answer the question of which positions were central: he ranked them by defensive assists. Indeed, the percentage of white players at a position was directly proportional to the total number of assists it converted. The logic makes sense too. Catchers are considered the field general of baseball. Shortstops and second basemen are the leaders of the infield, and outfielders are selected for their speed and arm strength above all.



Centrality is expressed similarly in football. The two positions with the most white representation are the two that handle the ball and offensive decision: quarterbacks and centers, with whites making up more than 80% in each position. Move away from the ball and decision-making at the line of scrimmage and progressively fewer whites appear. Roughly fifty percent of offensive lineman were white in 2014, the last time Tides surveyed by position. At running back and wide receiver, that number dropped to 12.5% and 10.6% respectively.

Despite the fact that you won’t see NFL decision-makers be openly racist in their process, these age-old biases routinely rear their ugly heads. Before the 2014 NFL draft, Reuben Fischer-Baum, Aaron Gordon and Billy Haisley of Deadspin compiled a database of the words NFL, CBS and ESPN writers used to describe black and white prospects. Different narratives formed based on an athlete’s skin color.

The prevalence of legacy hires tells you everything you need to know about how these stereotypes can last so long and become so congealed in NFL culture. It cannot be enough, then, to accept the excuses that NFL decision-makers are merely sticking to what has worked. That definition of what worked still relies on the same racist and essentialist assumptions about bodies and intelligence that drove the creation of those stereotypes decades ago. And the Rooney Rule, no matter how well intentioned, will never be enough to fix the damage that was done by coaches or scouts working under those same assumptions 20 years prior.

For now, men like Mike Tomlin, Vance Joseph and Steve Wilks are leading a generation of black head coaches who can challenge racial assumptions around leadership and intelligence and prove they’re capable of performing and deserving of these chances. But if the NFL sideline is ever going to look like the men who suit up every Sunday, it’s going to take more than diversity initiatives from the top. These problems represent generations-old biases that have burrowed deep within the minds of players, assistants, coaches and scouts from coast to coast and from the youth level up through the professional ranks, and fixing it will take deep reflection and conscious action from the white men who remain overrepresented in positions of power. The real question will be if enough of them are willing to take that step.