When Raheem Morris was fired in 2012 after three seasons as head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he didn’t think he would get a second chance at the top job elsewhere. That still hadn’t changed when, after several stops as an assistant, he was hired as the Los Angeles Rams’ defensive coordinator in 2021, nearly a decade later.
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Morris’ predecessor, Brandon Staley, had just been hired as the Los Angeles Chargers’ head coach after just one season on the job. Rams president Kevin Demoff felt confident Morris could follow a similar path.
“I remember telling Raheem, ‘You’ll be next,'” Demoff said recently. “And what he said to me has always stuck out in my mind, and it was the driving force of a lot of what happened. He goes, ‘Kevin, people like me don’t get second chances.'”
When the Rams beat the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl LVI that season, Demoff was certain Morris would be proven wrong. But after that hiring cycle passed without Morris landing a head-coaching job, Demoff had to accept a troubling reality.
“To watch Brandon have his choice of jobs — which I’m not saying was unfair for Brandon — and to watch Raheem struggle to get second interviews, it says something about where we’re at as a league,” Demoff said.
Black assistant coaches have historically faced a tougher path to becoming head coaches than their White counterparts. The 2024 hiring cycle, however, represented a sudden shift.
After five consecutive seasons in which just three NFL head coaches identified as Black, the number doubled after the New England Patriots hired Jerod Mayo, the Las Vegas Raiders hired Antonio Pierce and the Atlanta Falcons hired Morris. The Carolina Panthers also hired Dave Canales, who is of Mexican descent, giving the NFL a league-record nine head coaches of color.
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Despite the headway made, there remains doubt that the level of diversity that currently exists in NFL leadership positions is here to stay. The Athletic spoke to several executives, coaches, agents and league office employees, some of whom were granted anonymity so they could speak freely.
“To be frank, I think sometimes there may be too much optimism,” a Black NFC executive said. “I think there’s still not enough evidence to show that this is going to lead to a wholesale change.”
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“I think there is some tempered optimism,” a Black AFC executive said. “It’s a little wait-and-see. You want to see if there’s just been a push given the initiative and then once a couple of guys cycle off, it returns to what it was. Because, quite honestly, the last time we had this spike, that’s pretty much what happened. Let’s see how this plays out.”
The number of Black head coaches surged after the 2003 adoption of the Rooney Rule, which originally required NFL teams to interview at least one diverse candidate — a woman and/or person of color — for head-coaching vacancies. By 2006, there was an NFL-record seven Black head coaches, and following that season, Tony Dungy (Indianapolis Colts) and Lovie Smith (Chicago Bears) became the first Black head coaches to meet in the Super Bowl.
There were either six or seven Black head coaches every year from 2006-11, as well as successful Black GMs in Ozzie Newsome (Baltimore Ravens) and Jerry Reese (New York Giants). But by 2013, the number of Black head coaches fell to three. After rising back to seven in 2017, it once again went back down to three in 2019.
“We always have to hit upon the need to continue to have the foot on the pedal,” said Jonathan Beane, the NFL’s chief diversity and inclusion officer. “Just as easily as you make progress, you can revert.”
Morris’ story may represent a massive win for Black head coaches, 11 of whom have been hired more than once — 64 White head coaches have had multiple shots at the top job, with Jim Harbaugh (Chargers) and Dan Quinn (Commanders) being the most recent.
After spending six years as a defensive assistant with Tampa Bay, Morris was hired to be the Buccaneers’ head coach at age 32. He was fired after going 17-31 and missing the playoffs in each of his three seasons, then worked as the defensive backs coach for the Washington Commanders from 2012-14. He moved on to Atlanta in 2015, handling offensive and defensive duties before being promoted to defensive coordinator in 2020.
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When then-Falcons head coach Quinn was fired after an 0-5 start, Morris got the interim job. He went 4-7 but had strong support from the players and was interviewed for the full-time position. After being passed over for Arthur Smith, Morris landed with the Rams, and that three-year gap served as a period of instrumental growth.
“The Falcons, they talked about how much they thought he had grown in his time in L.A.,” said Demoff, who worked with Morris in Tampa and L.A. “It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, we made a mistake three years ago letting him out of the building.’ It was, ‘The difference we see in him now versus then makes us want to hire him as our head coach.’ And I think that’s a great testament to Raheem.
“It’s easy when you’ve been a head coach and when you’ve been part of the cycle to just say, ‘It’s not my time.’ For someone to relentlessly work on themselves and keep improving and to go make sure they get that second shot and it’s deserved and earned is such a credit to Raheem and what he’s done.”
The NFL is broadly focused on improving overall diversity, but there’s a specific reason there’s so much attention placed on Black representation in leadership positions. The league thrives off player labor, and the majority of those players are Black — according to The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida (TIDES), 53.5 percent of NFL players were Black in 2023 — but the percentage of Black people in the league’s positions of power has never come close to aligning with the representation among players.
The NFL’s recent hiring practices may signal a potential shift in the way owners are thinking. In 2023, TIDES gave the NFL a B+ for its hiring practices, the best grade the league has ever received.
“They’ve been feeling the pressure,” TIDES founder Richard Lapchick said. “I think that they have seen stories where Black head coaches have been successful along with other coaches of color. And this is 2024, after all. There definitely have been some owners who have opened up.”
In addition to six Black head coaches, the league has 13 Black defensive coordinators and six Black special teams coordinators but zero Black offensive coordinators.
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NFL personnel departments are typically much larger than coaching staffs, which means more potential opportunities for diverse candidates. Before this offseason, there were seven diverse team presidents and nine general managers of color.
“It’s starting to become more than guys just scouting and evaluating; guys are actually in the process of being in more leadership and managerial roles,” a Black AFC executive said. “For a long time, it was just like, ‘You deal with the players … but that’s it; let us pick the players. I think now guys have come up and gotten more positions of influence and are being exposed to doing more from the managerial and executive standpoint.”
There’s a belief that a strong pipeline for continued growth among Black executives could ensure that more individuals in positions of power will be more open to hiring Black head coaches. The NFL doesn’t have any Black principal owners, but there are five Black team presidents and seven Black GMs. Among the positions that most frequently lead to GM jobs — assistant GM, vice president of player personnel, director of player personnel, director of college scouting, etc. — Black representation is growing, according to TIDES. That has created a greater depth of diverse candidates ready to fill jobs when they open.
“There’s been a ton of intentionality behind building up that pipeline and making sure we put African-Americans in positions,” a Black AFC executive said, citing Browns GM Andrew Berry, Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and Lions GM Brad Holmes as examples. “I think in general we’re just being a little bit more intentional on our side of making sure we go find people.”
The NFL’s front office, general manager and coach accelerator programs have been particularly effective at the executive level, providing opportunities for diverse candidates to network with team owners, team presidents and other chief decision-makers.
“These owners are looking at the GM job as more than just being football-oriented,” a Black NFC executive said. “So, you get to reach outside of the good-old-boy network from that standpoint because they’re looking for people who are more well-rounded. They want people who can lead an organization, make decisions and collaborate across departments.”
Changes to the Rooney Rule may be helping as well. Teams are now required to interview at least two outside diverse candidates for GM, head coach and coordinator positions and at least one outside diverse candidate for quarterback coach positions. Teams that develop diverse candidates who get hired as GMs or head coaches elsewhere are awarded two third-round compensatory picks.
“For what everybody says, I do think the Rooney Rule has a lot to do with it,” a Black NFC executive said. “They are making teams cast a wider net.”
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To the Rams, it was clear Morris was head-coaching material.
He might be known as a defensive coach, but his superpower is leadership. His ability to connect with others is what has truly resonated with those who’ve worked alongside him. As the Rams went through a disastrous season in 2022, Morris played a vital role in holding the team together. He had fostered genuine relationships with players on both sides of the ball and could help ensure that the players, coaches, front office members and support staffers were on the same page.
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“I was watching Raheem step up and help carry the team through it,” Demoff said. “He was the light in our building in a really dark year.”
The Rams could have focused on keeping him in their building, but this offseason, key figures including Demoff, GM Les Snead, head coach Sean McVay and several notable players openly advocated for him to get a head-coaching job elsewhere.
“The most important thing in head-coaching hires is, ‘Do the players believe in the head coach?'” Demoff said. “He just has amazing people-connection abilities. … I remember having one conversation with a team over the past few years that had interviewed him and didn’t hire him. And, basically, they’re like, ‘Nobody can have that much energy,’ and thought it was all kind of an act. And I’m like, ‘No, that’s him every day.'”
Morris displayed that energy in the Falcons’ first team meeting of their offseason program in April. “I want to be world-class in everything we do,” Morris said. “You can’t just worry about football, man. … It starts and ends with our relationships.”
NFL teams may be changing their approach in terms of what types of head coaches they hire. Morris, Pierce and Mayo all have defensive backgrounds but are most lauded for their interpersonal skills. Focusing less on whether a coach has an offensive or defensive specialty could result in more diverse hires.
“When you talk about (former NFL linebackers) myself, Mayo and DeMeco Ryans, you’re talking about guys that were captains and were the leaders,” Pierce said recently. “I know we all talk about the quarterback, but what the hell do you think I did when I played? I ran the show. Those guys ran the show. So they know what it’s like to be a leader. They know what it’s like to be in front of a team, in front of a huddle, speak to guys and getting them to do what they want to do.”
This offseason’s shift toward defense — five of the eight head coaches hired came from that side of the ball — came after years of teams across the league pilfering hot-shot offensive minds from the coaching trees of McVay and San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan. It may have helped that three of the eight head coaches who won playoff games last season had defensive backgrounds.
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“I think owners are going to start to realize that the offensive guru thing is very much overplayed, and there are plenty of defensive head coaches who have had success with young quarterbacks,” a Black NFC executive said. “If you look at DeMeco in Houston right now, that’s a good example. He’s done an awesome job with (quarterback C.J.) Stroud.
“I think the more you see that, the more owners will be open to hiring people who are not just the ‘offensive gurus,’ but leaders of men, motivators, connectors and people who have a specialty that might not necessarily be the X’s and O’s on offense.”
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Increasing the number of Black offensive-minded coaches remains a priority, and the NFL is making efforts to do so. The league now requires each team to employ a full-time diverse offensive assistant, and, to create opportunities for more diverse quarterback coaches, it launched an annual quarterback coaching summit.
There are currently eight Black quarterback coaches and 10 quarterback coaches of color, along with five Black passing game coordinators, another position that frequently leads to an offensive coordinator role. Some believe there’s a hesitancy among Black head coaches in particular to hire what’s perceived to be too many Black assistants on their staff.
“I think that people sometimes are afraid of hiring a lot of Black people,” a Black AFC executive said. “I think when White guys get jobs, they can hire guys who have been fired multiple times to do whatever. When Black people get jobs, if one of your Black friends has been fired, then it’s like, ‘Why did you hire him?'”
Even when Black offensive coordinators have been immensely successful, it has remained difficult for them to land head-coaching roles. Eric Bieniemy helped the Chiefs win two Super Bowls as their offensive coordinator from 2018-22 but was constantly passed over for head-coach jobs. A narrative emerged that he needed to call plays to prove himself, so he left Kansas City to do just that. After a rough season with the Commanders, Bieniemy was not retained when Washington hired Quinn in February. Bieniemy is now back in the college ranks, serving as the assistant head coach and offensive coordinator at UCLA.
“It’s a double standard, but that’s the way, in my opinion, a large part of what life has been for Black people,” a Black AFC executive said. “There’s always those obstacles, and the goalposts can seem to constantly be moving, but that’s the challenge.”
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Despite the challenge, there is a belief among Black leaders in the league that their success will ultimately result in more opportunities for colleagues.
“I do think the marketplace still ends up coming back to productivity,” a Black AFC executive said. “Are there a few people who probably have not had that opportunity in the past no matter how capable they were? Sure. But I don’t think these owners are crazy. They want to win, and they want to make money and they want to be viewed as the best. I don’t think they’re going to just pick a White face if there’s somebody who’s that much better.”
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos of Mayo, Morris and Pierce: Maddie Meyer, Kevin C. Cox, Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
