NFL HC hiring and minority candidates

[wickedsolo]

I wanted to also add a column about the coach's "area of expertise"....ie, are they an offensive coach or defensive coach? Going further - are they a QB guy...are they a LB or DB guy? Race aside, as I said in the other thread about this topic, I think the NFL has a "QB" problem more than anything.

List:

Year	Coach	AA	Off/Def	Position
2020	Joe Judge		ST's	?
2020	Mike McCarthy		Off	QB
2020	Matt Rhule		Off	?
2020	Ron Rivera		Def	LB
2020	Kevin Stefanski		Off	QB
2019	Bruce Arians		Off	QB
2019	Adam Gase		Off	QB
2019	Brian Flores	*	Def	LB
2019	Matt LaFleur		Off	QB
2019	Vic Fangio		Def	LB/DL
2019	Freddie Kitchens		Off	QB
2019	Zac Taylor		Off	QB
2019	Kliff Kingsbury		Off	QB
2018	Steve Wilks	*	Def	DB
2018	Jon Gruden		Off	QB
2018	Mike Vrabel		Def	LB/DL
2018	Matt Patricia		Def	LB/DL
2018	Frank Reich		Off	QB
2018	Matt Nagy		Off	QB	2018	Pat Shurmur		Off	QB
2017	Vance Joseph	*	Def	DB
2017	Doug Marrone		Off	OL
2017	Sean McDermott		Def	LB
2017	Anthony Lynn	*	Def	DB
2017	Sean McVay		Off	QB
2017	Kyle Shanahan		Off	QB/RB
2016	Adam Gase		Off	QB
2016	Chip Kelly		Off	QB
2016	Dirk Koetter		Off	QB
2016	Ben Mcadoo		Off	QB
2016	Doug Pederson		Off	QB
2016	Mike Mularky		Off	OL/TE
2016	Hue Jackson	*	Off	QB
2015	Dan Quinn		Def	DL
2015	Rex Ryan		Def	DL/LB
2015	Jack Del Rio		Def	LB
2015	John Fox		Def	LB/DL
2015	Todd Bowles	*	Def	LB
2015	Gary Kubiak		Off	QB
2015	Jim Tomsula		Def	DL
2014	Mike Pettine		Def	DL/LB
2014	Bill O’Brien		Off	QB
2014	Ken Whisenhunt		Off	QB
2014	Jay Gruden		Off	QB
2014	Jim Caldwell	*	Off	QB
2014	Mike Zimmer		Def	DL
2014	Lovie Smith	*	Def	DB
2013	Andy Reid		Off	QB
2013	Chip Kelly		Off	QB
2013	Marc Trestman		Off	QB
2013	Gus Bradley
2013	Mike McCoy		Off	QB
2013	Doug Marrone		Off	OL
2013	Rob Chudzinski		Off	QB
2013	Bruce Arians		Off	QB
2012	Romeo Crennel	*
2012	Mike Mularky		Off	OL
2012	Jeff Fisher
2012	Joe Philbin		Off	QB
2012	Dennis Allen
2012	Chuck Pagano
2012	Greg Schiano
2011	Pat Shurmur		Off	QB
2011	Hue Jackson	*	Off	QB
2011	Jim Harbaugh		Off	QB
2011	Mike Munchak		Off	OL
2011	Ron Rivera
2011	John Fox
2011	Leslie Frazier	*
2010	Pete Carroll
2010	Chan Gailey		Off	QB
2010	Jason Garrett		Off	QB
2010	Mike Shanahan		Off	QB
2009	Josh McDaniel		Off	QB
2009	Jim Caldwell	*	Off	QB
2009	Todd Haley		Off	QB
2009	Jim Schwartz
2009	Rex Ryan
2009	Steve Spanuolo		Def	DL
2009	Raheem Morris	*
2008	Tony Sparano		Off	OL
2008	Tom Cable		Off	OL
2008	Jim Zorn		Off	QB
2008	Mike Smith
2008	John Harbuagh		ST's	DB-?

Anyway....I didn't go as far back as Jim did, but I went back far enough to show the data that I've observed. As the NFL has evolved into more of a passing offense with leniency towards offenses and the QB, in particular, and as college offenses have evolved into more dual-threat QB-driven offenses, NFL organizations have followed suit in who they go after to run their teams. The QB is the most important position on the team...it's also the most expensive. So, you better damn well sure get the guy that is going to get the most out of that position.

I think Kliff Kingsbury is a perfect example of this. He's young, he's smart, he's a former QB that was highly successful in a spread out college offense, and he coached some other pretty successful college QB's - Johnny Manzeil (while a failed NFL guy, was a Heisman winner at Texas A&M), Case Keenum, Baker Mayfield, Davis Webb, and Patrick Mahomes. The Cardinals had the #1 overall pick. They knew they were taking Kyler Murray. They wanted a coach that could translate Murray's skillset into the NFL and Kingsbury was their guy they felt could do that.

41 out of 75 HC vacancies were filled by Offensive/QB coaches since 2008. Since 2015, 23 offensive coaches filled HC vacancies.

[wickedsolo]

Aren't the overwhelming majority of NFL head coaches former (college or NFL) players? Aren't most college or NFL players African American?

It makes the most sense to me that in a fair world, if former players are hired as NFL coaches, that the percentage of NFL coaches that are minorities should come pretty close to the percentage of minorities that are players.

There are only 32 NFL HC jobs.

There are, on average, 13,000 football players in college just in the D1 FBS rank. That isn't including D1-AA, D2, D3, etc.

In any given year in the NFL, there are approximately 2,000 players in the league signed to a team...this isn't including unsigned free agents.


Your comment also assumes that everyone that played in college or in the NFL wants to coach.

[HotInHere]

If this were the case, than the Black Candidate’s that don’t get their shot have been superior for a few years and when their wait is over, they take the league by storm.

But that’s not happening either. So you are saying the best candidates rot for eternity? Because without a mountain of statistical evidence to back it up, I wiuld presume that Black HC’s hover around .500 win percentage as a whole just like the white coaches.

Even a .550 win percentage paints a clear picture, .520 is likely statistically significant.

It’s more work than I want to do, but. The entire conglomerate coaching record is exactly .500. It would take someone to add up the wins from every coach on the list and adding up the losses and comparing those numbers. It’s likely a lot of work to find out they tend toward the mean with enough data, but...


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That statistical analysis has a few holes in it though. While the overall record is .500, it is skewed heavily towards veteran coaches. Bill Belichick is 150 games over .500. Hue Jackson is 33 games under .500. So it takes almost 5 Hue Jacksons (or 38 Freddie Kitchens) to cancel out one Bill Belichick.

Startup coaches are at a disadvantage. They are usually going to a bad team, and they often are not given much rope in terms of turning things around.

So apples-to-apples, you'd have to look at JUST start-up coaches, and the improvement of the team record. (A coach who turns a 9-win team into a 10-win team is not as impressive as a coach who turns a 1-win team into a 7-win team, no?) You'd also have to look at the amount of rope a coach gets based on their performance. Some could argue that if Belichick was black, he would have never gotten another chance to coach after his under-.500 stint with the Browns.

I agree with you though on this point: if more skilled coaches are being passed over based on skin color, we should be able to uncover that fact with a proper statistical analysis.

[jonboy79]

That statistical analysis has a few holes in it though. While the overall record is .500, it is skewed heavily towards veteran coaches. Bill Belichick is 150 games over .500. Hue Jackson is 33 games under .500. So it takes almost 5 Hue Jacksons (or 38 Freddie Kitchens) to cancel out one Bill Belichick.

Startup coaches are at a disadvantage. They are usually going to a bad team, and they often are not given much rope in terms of turning things around.

So apples-to-apples, you'd have to look at JUST start-up coaches, and the improvement of the team record. (A coach who turns a 9-win team into a 10-win team is not as impressive as a coach who turns a 1-win team into a 7-win team, no?) You'd also have to look at the amount of rope a coach gets based on their performance. Some could argue that if Belichick was black, he would have never gotten another chance to coach after his under-.500 stint with the Browns.

I agree with you though on this point: if more skilled coaches are being passed over based on skin color, we should be able to uncover that fact with a proper statistical analysis.

I wasn’t going to do the work so thought it up as simple as possible, but I think you are correct in your deliberations. We could even use the same subset of coaches we are looking at for above.

The whole secret untapped cache of prime coach candidates just doesn’t make sense to me at all.


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[InigoMontoya]

There are only 32 NFL HC jobs.

There are, on average, 13,000 football players in college just in the D1 FBS rank. That isn't including D1-AA, D2, D3, etc.

In any given year in the NFL, there are approximately 2,000 players in the league signed to a team...this isn't including unsigned free agents.


Your comment also assumes that everyone that played in college or in the NFL wants to coach.

My comment doesn't assume that. You assumed that. It probably does assume that all races would want to coach at the same proportional rate. Do you have any data to prove otherwise? Why wouldn't African Americans want to be head coaches at the same rate as white players?

[wickedsolo]

My comment doesn't assume that. You assumed that. It probably does assume that all races would want to coach at the same proportional rate. Do you have any data to prove otherwise? Why wouldn't African Americans want to be head coaches at the same rate as white players?

I dont know. Without polling every single player, you'd never be able to ascertain that kind of data to make an assessment.

What I'm saying is that just between D1/FBS and the NFL there are, on average, 15,000 players each year. Even if 1% of those players wanted to get into coaching, that's still 150 people for 32 NFL HC gigs...most of which are not openly available.

I don't think you can make a proportionality argument when it comes to NFL HC gigs and college players/NFL players.

What if only 2 out of every 10 black players aspired to get into coaching? Based on Jim's statistics above showing about 16% of HC hires in the last "X" number of years have been minority hires, well then that proportionality would make sense.

My point is, we simply just dont know what percentage of players actually want to get into coaching.

There are also lots of programs with most colleges for graduate assistant coaches to get their foot in the door. How many are taking advantage of that? I just think there are a lot of variables here and it's impossible to really know.


I mean, here is a great question that I dont think anyone knows the answer to - when an NFL HC gig becomes available, how many applicants are there? We always hear about a team wanting to interview someone...but what about the guys that are applying out of band...or that maybe you don't hear about?

[JimZipCode]

If this were the case, than the Black Candidate’s that don’t get their shot have been superior for a few years and when their wait is over, they take the league by storm.

But that’s not happening either.

Best, most thoughtful rejoinder to this line of inquiry. Bravo.

Most NFL coaches aren't particularly "successful". Damn few coaches ever win a SB. My original version of the table of coaches had a "good hire" column, which I printed as a separate table a couple posts later. I only tagged about a third of the coaches as "good hires". Not that my judgement is the be-all end-all of coach evaluation: but I'm probably not all that far off.

Most coaches are hired into situations where the team is bad. Otherwise they usually wouldn't have fired their coach. (Some coaches leave a job due to retirement, but not that often.) Most coaching hires are made by bad organizations. Right? The Ravens have hired three HCs in 25 years; the Steelers, three in 50. The Brownies might have three HCs in any given season.

Bad organizations with bad rosters don't make a good platform for taking the league by storm. Also, to do any kind of consistent winning, a coach will have to luck into a QB etc. Just because coaches are better than Adam Gase, doesn't mean they're going to take a lot of wins from Bill Belchick & Sean Payton.

...I wiuld presume that Black HC’s hover around .500 win percentage as a whole just like the white coaches.
...
The entire conglomerate coaching record is exactly .500.

Hot answered this already, but basically: while the aggregate coaches all amount to 0.500, the median coach is nowhere near 0.500.

Consider 2007: In games played by the Patriots that year, Bill Belichick was 16-0, and the other dozen or so opposing coaches were all oh-fer. Adds up to 0.500, but it's not split evenly. Bill James wrote decades ago, "failure is commonplace but not enduring". You get a very few coaches over 0.500, a few coaches around 0.500, and many MANY coaches below 0.500.

This page on PFR lists 500 coaches:

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/coaches

(you have to uncheck the "Hide non-qualifiers for rate stats" box)

Sort by win%, the 250th coach on the list is at 0.417. That's Roch Kotite's winning pctg; Dennis Ericson's. Remember Dan Campbell, who served as interim coach for the Dolphins after Joe Philbin was fired in 2015? Tough guy? He finished 5-7 on the year: 0.417.

[jonboy79]

Best, most thoughtful rejoinder to this line of inquiry. Bravo.

Most NFL coaches aren't particularly "successful". Damn few coaches ever win a SB. My original version of the table of coaches had a "good hire" column, which I printed as a separate table a couple posts later. I only tagged about a third of the coaches as "good hires". Not that my judgement is the be-all end-all of coach evaluation: but I'm probably not all that far off.

Most coaches are hired into situations where the team is bad. Otherwise they usually wouldn't have fired their coach. (Some coaches leave a job due to retirement, but not that often.) Most coaching hires are made by bad organizations. Right? The Ravens have hired three HCs in 25 years; the Steelers, three in 50. The Brownies might have three HCs in any given season.

Bad organizations with bad rosters don't make a good platform for taking the league by storm. Also, to do any kind of consistent winning, a coach will have to luck into a QB etc. Just because coaches are better than Adam Gase, doesn't mean they're going to take a lot of wins from Bill Belchick & Sean Payton.



Hot answered this already, but basically: while the aggregate coaches all amount to 0.500, the median coach is nowhere near 0.500.

Consider 2007: In games played by the Patriots that year, Bill Belichick was 16-0, and the other dozen or so coaches were oh-fer. Bill James wrote decades ago, "failure is commonplace but not enduring". You get a very few coaches over 0.500, a few coaches around 0.500, and many MANY coaches below 0.500.

This page on PFR lists 500 coaches:

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/coaches

(you have to uncheck the "Hide non-qualifiers for rate stats" box)

Sort by win%, the 250th coach on the list is at 0.417. That's Roch Kotite's winning pctg; Dennis Ericson's. Remember Dan Campbell, who served as interim coach for the Dolphins after Joe Philbin was fired in 2015? Tough guy? He finished 5-7 on the year: 0.417.

That was a really easy way to make my point bollocks... and makes the math harder.


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[JimZipCode]

The whole secret untapped cache of prime coach candidates just doesn’t make sense to me at all.

Does to me.

But I think organizations across all sports and all levels, tend to do a shitty job of hiring coaches. People don't think deeply about what coaching is, so they get diverted by shiny things. A coach who stood on the sideline while Peyton Manning threw 50 TD passes, gets five seasons and counting to prove that he can't do the job. It's silly.

Brian McCormick's rants about hiring decisions in college & juco & HS basketball, are educational.

[JimZipCode]

I don't think you can make a proportionality argument when it comes to NFL HC gigs and college players/NFL players.
...
My point is, we simply just dont know what percentage of players actually want to get into coaching.

That's silly. You think white players disproportionately want to get into coaching? That is, say for example, 10% of all white players want to get into coaching, but only 1% of black players? 10x as many white ex-players want to coach, as black ex-players?

I don't think that hypothesis is even worth considering. The simplest assumption is that "similar" percentages of players across ethnic groups, have an interest in coaching. Maybe it's 9% in one population and 11% in another: whatever, close enough.

I don't see how it makes any sense to assume an order of magnitude greater interest in coaching from one ethnic group vs another. You'd need some compelling evidence.

[InigoMontoya]

I dont know. Without polling every single player, you'd never be able to ascertain that kind of data to make an assessment.

What I'm saying is that just between D1/FBS and the NFL there are, on average, 15,000 players each year. Even if 1% of those players wanted to get into coaching, that's still 150 people for 32 NFL HC gigs...most of which are not openly available.

I don't think you can make a proportionality argument when it comes to NFL HC gigs and college players/NFL players.

What if only 2 out of every 10 black players aspired to get into coaching? Based on Jim's statistics above showing about 16% of HC hires in the last "X" number of years have been minority hires, well then that proportionality would make sense.

My point is, we simply just dont know what percentage of players actually want to get into coaching.

There are also lots of programs with most colleges for graduate assistant coaches to get their foot in the door. How many are taking advantage of that? I just think there are a lot of variables here and it's impossible to really know.


I mean, here is a great question that I dont think anyone knows the answer to - when an NFL HC gig becomes available, how many applicants are there? We always hear about a team wanting to interview someone...but what about the guys that are applying out of band...or that maybe you don't hear about?

Here are things we do know:

- Black players just weren't allowed to be coaches until recently - in the NFL or college. We know the reason was racially motivated.

- Because of the Rooney Rule, since 2004, one minority candidate must interview for each head coaching vacancy. So, if there are an average of three head coaching interviews per vacancy, then 33% of those interviewing would be minorities. 4 vacancies would mean 25% are minority interviews. Sure, there could be some "hidden" interviewers for head coaching positions, but having that be a large percentage of interviewees ins't realistic, and sounds more like conspiracies than data.

- Black players become coaches in college and the NFL at a much higher rate than they do that become head coaches. They just mainly have lower rung jobs. They don't get the biggest jobs (College head coach, offensive coordinator in the NFL and head coach) to the same proportion as white coaches do.

Here's an article outlining how black coaches fair in the NFL head coaching hiring process. https://theundefeated.com/features/n...iring-process/

[wickedsolo]

That's silly. You think white players disproportionately want to get into coaching?

I dont know. And neither do you.