The NFL’s Systemic Racism Problem
Probably going to have to make a bunch of comics on this as the lawsuit develops. Especially if we get lucky enough to reach discovery and things don’t quietly get settled after a certain point, which is sadly what usually happens. I hope Flores is out for blood because this is a reckoning the NFL needs and we all know they would be happy to sweep it under the rug and have us all talk about something else. The NFL only “fixes” something when the problem has exploded in their faces. I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t even have the pathetic endzone messages without the BLM movement spiking in 2020 directly shining more light on how they handled Kaepernick, who was already a huge black eye to anyone who cared.
So Brian Flores was very surprisingly fired by the Dolphins in a move I think shocked everyone. The Dolphins weren’t perfect, but they seemed like they were building something and even though I had questions about what Flores was doing down there, it felt like everyone felt he was a good coach and not on the hot seat. Then a bit more detail leaks and it feels like Flores was fired because he wasn’t getting along with the management. His lawsuit shines some light as to how that friction seemed to arise. Was Stephen Ross really offering him money to tank? That’s beyond illegal and morally dubious with sports betting becoming more accepted. The whole pay-to-lose thing is a can of worms on its own I can’t touch on here.
Then Flores interviews with the Giants, gets passed over for Daboll, and soon after files the lawsuit. In the lawsuit he uses text messages from Bill Belichick apparently not knowing how to use a phone and texting the wrong Brian congratulations before Flores even got interviewed. Big yikes. He also uses a prior experience in Denver where he felt disrespected by the team during the interview, feeling as if they did not treat him seriously and used him as a Rooney Rule obligation.
The Rooney Rule, if you remain somehow unfamiliar, is that every team must interview a minority (doesn’t have to be black, just not white) candidate for coaching positions. It started as a way to try and boost minority opportunity but now has been disgraced to the point of being a joke. People have mocked the “Rooney Rule Interview” for at least a decade that I can remember. Every year you see teams interview a guy and everyone can tell they did it to meet the obligation. It actually seemed to work for a little while. There were a fair number of black coaches through the late 2000’s and early 2010’s. They’ve completely fallen out of favor in recent years and the newest trend is 35-year-old white guys who worked for Sean McVay.
Flores is right to call out the league. This is a problem. The NFL is a majority black space yet the highest-ranking staff remains overwhelmingly white. Black coaches tend to get shorter leashes (Steve Wilks) and sometimes feel like they get hired simply to bridge the gap during rebuild years (David Culley). The biggest problem is that it’s all so hard to definitively prove. That’s what sucks about systemic racism. Once you understand it, it is remarkably easy to spot, but so difficult to concretely prove because it can always be explained away with broad excuses even as looking at the big picture makes it obvious a problem exists. People, and the law in general, still see racism on an individual persecution level. We can look at the Giants this hiring cycle specifically as a great example.
The Giants hired the Bills Joe Schoen to be the new GM. Daboll was already a hot HC candidate. When the Giants hired a Bills guy to be the new GM, it felt like Daboll was a natural choice. Flores was also interviewed but he was likely on the outside looking in and would need to blow the team away. I’m pretty sure Schoen just wanted to work with a guy he already had a great relationship with. I don’t think how the Giants treated Flores was intentionally malicious, intentionally racist. It wasn’t individual persecution against Flores. The problem is that the position Flores was in is the position so many minority coaches find themselves in. They are always on the outside looking in. They never seem to be the hot guy. They never seem to have the “connection” needed to break through. Hell, Flores actually kinda did have a connection, the Bill Belichick one, and he was still stuck outside the window, put in a position where the scales were tipped against him.
But this is so hard to prove unless you luck into a Jon Gruden private email. There were 9 HC openings this offseason. 2 were filled by minority coaches, and both felt a bit sketchy. For one, the Dolphins (Mike McDaniel) had an opening only because the Dolphins stupidly fired Flores in the first place. The Texans are a trash fire who used David Culley (black) to steer the disaster for a horrible season. Even Culley knew his time was a joke and he openly admitted taking the job because he knew he wouldn’t get another chance. The Texans spent months openly flirting with JOSH MCCOWN (white, loves Jesus, has absolutely zero coaching experience) only to seemingly have waited too long to just hire the guy and thanks to the Flores lawsuit apparently swept in to use Lovie Smith as yet a second stopgap. It feels like the Texans wanted to hire McCown but were too shy because they knew they’d look stupid, and then the Flores news put them in a bind, leaving Flores and McCown the two choices. They couldn’t pick the white guy with no credentials, but they also couldn’t hire the guy currently suing the NFL, so they grabbed Lovie out of the blue. The Texans are a joke.
The other hires? If you look at them individually, you get a similar situation as the Giants. Easily explained away as the guy the team felt best suited for the gig. The Vikings hired Kevin O’Connell, another McVay pupil, over Patrick Graham, a man with significantly more experience. But they also hired a black GM, so was it intentionally racist? Probably not. The Saints? They promoted Dennis Allen, who has already stepped in admirably for Payton. Makes sense. The Jags and Pederson? They might have hired Leftwich (black) but they refused to fire Trent “wormtongue” Baalke and Leftwich pulled out. Pederson isn’t bad for a backup plan. The Broncos and Hackett? They clearly are courting Rodgers and need an offensive mind after years of failures on that side. Chicago and Eberflus? I admit that one has me stumped I don’t know what the Bears are doing.
The problem is not any of those hires individually and none of them were likely racially motivated in a purposeful persecution way. The problem is it’s another year where basically everyone who got hired was white and the 2 minority hires are strange. Why do these young white guys like Kevin O’Connell or Mike McDaniel rise through the ranks so fast, yet people like Patrick Graham, Leftwich, and Eric Bieniemy have success for years and yet get every excuse thrown at them when their name comes up? Why was Jim Caldwell fired and still unemployed? Why isn’t Todd Bowles getting any love? Why is Mike Tomlin the 8th highest-paid coach when he’s literally never had a losing season and actually got passed over by the same stupid Dolphins for being “too hip hop” (well I guess some cases are obviously individual racism)? Why do Sean McVay assistants who do not call plays (O’Connell) or even coordinate the offense (Zach Taylor) get hired so easily but the one black guy he hired (Morris) not get any real buzz? Hell, why does Sean McVay hire so many white people to start? It’s all connections all the way down and minority coaches are always stuck trying to find a way in, and even when they do, face difficulties moving forward. Sure, Raheem Morris wasn’t a very good coach in Tampa, but Josh McDaniels was an absolute disaster and he became a hot coaching commodity after a few years again anyway, and then he ruined his reputation screwing the Colts, and STILL got a third chance with the Raiders. Yes, Eric Bieniemy has a couple problematic incidents in his past, but I don’t think most fans even know about those, they’d rather just give Andy Reid all the credit, and since when has the NFL ever cared about problematic incidents? Matt Patricia possibly raped someone, remember that? Nobody even bothered to look into his past until after he got the job.
It’s all right there, blatantly staring at us in the face. It’s a very visible problem to anyone who isn’t willingly burying their heads in the sand, determined to not look at the thing that might make them feel uncomfortable. I don’t know if Flores will have enough hard evidence to get anything fixed. I don’t know how far this can go. The cynic in me doesn’t have a lot of hope. But the NFL needs a good punch to the nuts here, and I hope Flores is the guy to do it. He may have completely ruined his future as a coach by daring to be the guy who openly fought the power, and I wish him absolute success.
I’ve asked this to people before, regarding the Rooney Rule, but no one ever seems to be able to come up with anything… what’s the answer? What can the NFL do more than they’re already doing? Like you say in your commentary, unless you hit on Gruden-type e-mails, it’s very hard to prove racist intent in these things. At this point, the only thing the NFL could possibly do is actually force teams to hire minorities for HC and GM positions. And while I’m sure some people would applaud that, it really isn’t a good look, either.
I’m hoping, as more and more Boomer (and older) owners are replaced by Gen X (and younger) ones, we’ll see more progress, on this front. Progress takes time… look how long it took to go from ending slavery to the Civil Rights Act. Sometimes progress just requires waiting out an older, less progressive, generation and I think that’ll be the case here.
This is now the longest period between expansions (20 years and going) in the NFL, the best thing to do is to have an expansion of two teams and only except minority owners. I know the Broncos are for sale, but adding 2 more opportunities for minority ownership could shake up hiring practices. But I’m just spitballing and have no proof to back it up.
Even if we do add 2 expansion teams, they would still be outnumbered 32 to 2
Not that Shad Khan is a great example, since he seems to be the NFL’s answer to the American billionaire who buys a PL team despite knowing nothing about soccer and just hires the names he recognizes, but the NFL’s one minority owner isn’t a great example of expanded hiring practices so far.
Dave touched on it above… people come into these positions with a list of “my guys”. If I’m getting on a sailboat and being dropped into the ocean in a middle of a hurricane, and I have to pick ONE person who is out there with me… it’s going to be someone I know I can work with. And if my best buddy that I’ve known for 7 years has all kinds of survival skills, I’m picking them. I don’t care if they are black, white, or purple with yellow polka dots, I’m rolling with a known commodity to me.
So the solution is simple, but complicated. We need more minority candidates to be organically viewed as “my guy” by people getting into GM positions. This is a hard thing to foster, nearly impossible to track, and you don’t really know what will happen until the tree blossoms one day, hopefully. I’m not saying this is a solution, but some kind of survival experience for all people looking to be coordinators or coaches could accelerate the process. You do a couple of trust falls with someone and experience the joy of being chased and almost eaten by a bear… that creates a bond for life.
You’ve pulled out what I think the only real solution is, the nepotism and “connections” needs to start including more minorities. I was hoping as time wore on that the old white guard would get swept away as a relic from another time and more young black coaches who played in more diverse eras would move into those slots, but it’s not happening. Now the jobs are just going to McVays. Young white dudes who all know each other.
McVay had family connections. The “old white guard” won’t go away on their own, past racism stays with us unless we put some real effort into correcting it. Unfortunately that requires the NFL to seriously invest in the issue, while they just want the cheapest solution that makes it look like they’re doing something
In a sadly ironic way, I don’t even think owners view the hires through the lens of skin color. If they genuinely believed a minority candidate had the best shot of winning, I think they’d do it. They just don’t believe the first part of that sentence right now, because the minority candidates aren’t anybody’s “guy”.
Maybe the owners need to take on minority interns or something. Then in 10 years, someone like Mara or Jones can be like, “Hey, there’s that little intern who used to sit with me at ownership meetings, all grown up and full of experience. They could be my guy!”
Jerry Reese got hired as the Giants GM in 2007 and nobody made a fuss. Why? Because he was on the inside, and Ernie Accorsi viewed him as “my guy.” We need more of those situations.
Pretty much on point here. Systemic racism is something that is extremely difficult to solve since it is rarely obvious on the surface, and when it comes to a situation like the NFL where everything is essentially merit-based, there really is no good fix short of outright forcing teams to hire black head coaches. All we can really do is wait and hope that younger, more progressive owners break out of the “Who you know” style of hiring that the current owners tend to go by.
The one incentive I like that they’re already doing is offering picks to teams who have a minority figure elevated to a high position in another organization. I believe the Browns and 49ers both get 2 late 3rd rounders over the next few years as compensation for “developing” candidates of color. I think it’s the right approach. Instead of forcing teams to have a meeting they aren’t interested in having, you encourage organic growth within organizations, incentivizing them to give minority candidates more opportunities to shine and work their way up while also developing the kinds of relationships other candidates have historically benefitted from. I think it strikes a good balance between being beneficial enough to make teams consider it, but not too beneficial so it’s the only reason owners would hire and promote minority candidates. It’s not perfect, but I think that’s the right angle to approach this from.
I like the spirit but I have my doubts on this rule. I feel like it empowers people to only promote from within their own system because they rely on other teams to hire their guys for them to get picks. So as a team you have a competitive advantage by NOT hiring the other teams minority candidates but no incentive to promote your own within the org. If you have a two coaches\gm’s you like and one of them can be hired straight up but the other gives that team a pick to improve their team it’s to your advantage to not hire the minority. If both teams received a pick due to the hire it would level out the competitive part but that takes equal opportunity to the other extreme. Systematic racism is hard to fight because of logic like I listed above.
The biggest problem is the pipeline issue. I forget who pointed this out, but I saw someone explain a couple years ago that they guys who get head coaching jobs right now are mostly offensive coordinators, and the hot young OCs tend to be former QB coaches, and the QB coaches tend to be white. It bears out too.
Last year there were 41 people who held OC or equivalent positions in the NFL and only 8 were minorities, 7 of them black. Of those, only three have been considered head coach prospects so far – Eric Bieniemy, who either interviews poorly or is toxic because of his off field issues; Byron Leftwich, who reportedly turned down the Saints job for the reasons Flores cited in his lawsuit; and Mike McDaniel.
Meanwhile 22 out of 44 people to hold DC or equivalent level positions in the NFL in 2021 were minorities, 21 of them black. Lovie Smith was promoted internally. How many other defensive coordinators even got an interview, black or otherwise?
The developmental comp picks might help with that – if teams know they can get draft compensation for losing a coordinator they might default more often to promoting a minority coach over a white male one when both are equally qualified – but that’s going to take time to bear fruit. I don’t know if there’s anything that can be done to increase hiring right now other than a change in the philosophy of coach selection.
The NFL could start a program that helps players transition to coaching when they retire, with additional focus on minority players. Of course, it’ll be much cheaper to just do a couple more interviews
It’s a tense topic and I gotta wonder, if Flores was white would he have been fired? Cuz as a Bears fan I wanted us to hand him a contract as soon as he walked out the door.
Probably considering there was a split in the organization, having the owner and the gm against you will probably get you fired no matter race.
To me, the Rooney rule doesn’t accomplish anything as far as causing change. What it does do, however, is punish teams for being racist. It exists as a thorn in their sides and as long as no progress is made I am absolutely ok with that.
I’m so torn on this one. On the one hand, Flores is 10000% correct. And I applaud him for taking a stand.
And then on the other hand… he’s made it very much about himself, to the point where he almost seems petty about it. “The Broncos were DRUNK when they met with me. It MUST have been a sham interview.” “BB said he thinks Daboll is being hired. It MUST be a sham interview, so the Giants MUST BE RACIST.” “The Texans hired a black guy, but they didn’t hire me. Ok. They can’t be racist… so it MUST BE because of my lawsuit.”
There’s a whole lotta accusations that, as you mentioned Dave, are going to be REAAAAAALLY hard to prove, and could genuinely have easily explained answers. If Elway was up all night traveling, it could explain him looking disheveled. BB could have misunderstood or misread a text, given how drunk/incapable he seems during that conversation.
I’m not saying he wasn’t dismissed as a candidate at any or all of these places due to skin color, and I’m all for investigating it if there’s smoke. Especially in regards to the Dolphins. But I think going after the Broncos and Giants in the manner that he is, full-on pitbull, isn’t going to help his case. I’m fully supportive of the bigger picture he’s going for, but the specifics against the Broncos and Giants, to me, just seem way too speculative, and his statement regarding the Texans is really making it hard for me to empathize.
It also doesn’t help that his law team comes off like a bunch of jackasses. They’re long-time friends of his, which is fine, and the fact that their law firm currently employs 0 minorities is weird, but fine. But they’re just really grasping in some of their explanations of things.
So I hope this elicits major changes and opens up some eyes, but without a much stronger case than text messages from a confused old man, I don’t know what he’s hoping to achieve against the Broncos and Giants.
I agree he probably should have not sued the other teams to make a better case for himself.
As a Texans fan, I guarantee that the lawsuit drove the Texans away from Flores as head coach, however there was still a shot that the Texans will still hire him as DC, but after the statements he made against the team, its unlikely
I really don’t understand his strategy, in general. He could have waited for all of the jobs he was up for to resolve themselves before filing the lawsuit. It’s not like he needed to file it RIGHT THEN. Heck, he might have even been able to get more evidence by going through all interviews and being observant of how he was treated. But yea, it seems like a no-brainer that suing a company is going to make them hesitant to hire you for a position.
Super Bowl week is when the NFL gets the most coverage so he might have wanted to do it where his lawsuit was going to get the most media coverage. The Lawsuit is most likely going to die out after a couple of weeks though.
Are you joking? The text from BB is the only real, direct piece of evidence of racism he has. To think otherwise is just being a fan blinded by homer glasses. The evidence of Ross asking him to tank might be real, and is probably more damning, but it’s not directly evidence of racism.
I’ll repeat it again, so that I’m crystal clear – I’m 100% open to an investigation, if it’s warranted. And if there’s proof, I’m all for it coming to light. I’m NOT saying the Giants are definitively 10000% innocent here with homer glasses.
What I AM saying is that text messages from BB claiming “I THINK they’re hiring Daboll,” does NOT constitute proof of racism. If he goes to a court of law with nothing but THAT, he will lose the case, and quickly.
It’s a class-action lawsuit. He needs a lot more people to join before the case can even go to court. He’s citing this incident with the Giants as evidence of a systemic thing. He cited the Broncos as another one but he had no evidence until Elway admitted to showing up disheveled to the interview in his statement. That’s why both teams needed to be brought up in the lawsuit
The text from Belichick still doesn’t constitute as racism. It’s proof of how ineffective the Rooney Rule is, and that doesn’t make the Giants racist at all. Daboll was their guy and they knew it, but they were forced to interview another candidate to satisfy the rule. It’d be extremely difficult to prove racist intent there.
Again, it’s a class-action lawsuit. Usually that means 20 people at least for the case to go forward. Just this one doesn’t prove anything. 20 or more similar stories would paint a picture that would be very difficult for the NFL to explain away though
Thanks for the clarification. If the intent is specifically that he knows he needs a dozen or so other guys to step forward before this makes any sense, then I can understand the intent behind it a little more. So thank you for that.
But at the same time… if he got 2 dozen guys to step forward with similar stories of similar quality (e.g., EXTREMELY POOR), where does that get us? Or are we simply saying that all whites who interview and aren’t hired ISN’T racism, but all minorities who interview and aren’t hired IS racism?
I said it before, and I’ll repeat myself. The quality of this particular piece of “evidence” is GARBAGE, as is Elway being disheveled. If he has 50 pieces of evidence that are this mushy in quality, I still don’t think this case goes anywhere. He needs something like emails from Mara to BB saying, “Yo, we don’t like your black guy… cuz he’s black. We like the chubby white bald dude with the beard. But make sure you don’t tell the wrong Brian, ok, Bill????”
And then Bill writing them back with something EXPLICITLY racist, like: “Oh crudmuffins, I wrote the black guy back by mistake. Oops. Now he’s going to sue you. I always knew I couldn’t trust that guy… because he’s black. Black people can never be trusted.”
I think you’re equating personal racism with systemic racism. The general pattern of disregarding racial minorities in favour of white people is what’s on the line, not whether Billy B thinks black people can be trusted or whatever. If there are fifty stories of black candidates feeling like they weren’t being taken seriously — what Elway showing up disheveled communicated to Flores — and no such sentiment from white candidates, that’s enough for a preponderance of evidence ruling in favour of the plaintiffs.
And if you’re wondering why Elway’s appearance communicates that, it’s because, if your skin colour is dark, you need to be top shape presentable for whatever business you’re doing or you’re told you’re not taking it seriously. Elway’s statement reads like “we’re already humouring you by showing up, what do you mean I needed to go through any extra effort for you?” to me and I suspect to anyone else who isn’t white
I might be. I’ll be the first to admit I’ve been swinging back and forth on this topic over the last week. And I’m the last person that should be commenting on law in any capacity, so I should probably shut up and sit down. XD But just logically, it feels odd to me that any court could come to any conclusion in his favor without something better than what’s been presented. The BB texts – to me – don’t seem to rise above “He said / He said”.
And even if BB did know something, you could take the same situation, swap out Flores for someone like Doug Pederson, and it could play out the exact same way. I would think, for it to be able to hold up – systemically or otherwise – as a racially motivated maneuver, that it needs to be unequivocally driven by race, no?
If you can take it and apply it to every white coach who didn’t get a job, how can this be proof that it was racially motivated? Again, just so we’re all clear. I’m not saying it 1000% WASN’T driven by race, I just legitimately don’t understand how it can be construed as proof that IT IS.
This is a civil case, so the standard is not unequivocally beyond doubt but “more probable than not”. If it was a criminal case, yes, they’d have to prove that it was racially motivated. But it’s civil, so the standard is lower. If you can get 50 stories where minority candidates seem to not be taken seriously while the white candidates don’t have stories like that, it’s difficult to come up with a more likely explanation than racist hiring practices
Ahhhh, ok. That took a few go rounds, but I’m following now. Thanks for educating me. Your explanations make a lot more sense than my wild ravings. XD
I personally don’t see the suit as alleging pure racism, but instead alleging that the rooney rule is insufficient as currently constructed. If that is indeed the angle he is going for, then the texts from bill might be all he needs to show the court that sham interviews to satisfy the rule are being constructed. It’s certainly the closest we have to hard evidence that we’ve had in who knows how long. And from that angle of arguing the rule, it makes sense to argue any team he feels conducted him a sham interview as well.
If anything, I think another way to look at it is that he ISN’T making it about himself, but instead trying to be the guy who uncovers what we know is happening all the time to other people too. Stuff like the giants situation, where teams have their mind made up before even bringing in their interview to satisfy the rooney rule, absolutely has to be happening each year. Just because he’s the guy bringing the suit doesn’t mean he’s in it just for him.
As you’ve written it, I completely agree. I think my conundrum is that’s not how his lawyers have been talking about it. If the statements they’re putting out there were more to that effect, “We understand the teams are operating within the rules laid before them, but the Rooney Rule isn’t working in its current format, and we need to evolve it,” I’d be onboard. But his lawyers – and they’re his friends, so they may be the ones responsible for amping up the rhetoric to help defend his reputation – seem more focused on “How dare they disrespect my client like that! It’s 100% proof of racism!” They seem more focused on making the Giants and Broncos pay for “sham interviews” than in pushing things forward – at least verbally.
Now, given that he genuinely feels disrespected, I completely understand why he’d be livid. But sometimes, even if you’re justified, you need to keep a cool head and figure out what your goal is and how to get there. It sucks, because it means he has to the heavy lifting, but given the current state of the NFL, that’s what is required to move the needle forward. He could have had his lawyers engage the Giants before the interview and try to figure out if what BB said was accurate before lobbing bombs at them. Pointing a finger and crying “Racism!” feels like less of a means to finding a longterm solution, and more about reparations over his anger at a perceived mistreatment.
Put another way, my wife sometimes tells me, “When you said [X], it made me feel [Y].” And I’ll be like, “Well, I wasn’t trying to make you feel [Y], I was trying to do… [Z].” She engages in a discussion with me to clarify if her PERCEPTION of a situation aligns with my INTENTION. And if they don’t line up, we attempt to understand why. If she just ran to all of our friends and started shouting, “My husband said [X], he’s an [insult goes here]!”… that’s not going to help our problem, even if it ends up being the truth of the matter. That’s what I mean when I say he’s making it more about himself, if that makes sense.
He filed it as a class action. He put his experiences in the complaint, with the assumption that anyone who joins with him would do the same. A civil complaint has to be all about the damages you suffered, because you only have standing to sue someone on behalf of yourself, your dependents, and anyone who gives you authority to do so. Right now that list includes only himself.
I know most sports pundits are hired to babble nonsensically, but is there a reason why none of these shows could explain it this directly? I remember it being mentioned on the first day as a class action. But I don’t follow law enough to remember the nuances of how it works; I think the last time it had been explained to me in detail was during the OJ Trial. And then it never gets brought up by the talking heads, even the ones who are openly criticizing the NFL and could use this point in their favor.
Honestly? Because the only analyst I can think of who’s a lawyer and not a baseball guy is Steve Young.
Last season, the Texans were not in a situation for a rebuild as they only had 5 picks and had one of the worst salary cap situations in the NFL. They knew this wasn’t going to be a quick one-two year rebuild like in 2013 when they hired Buttchin. So instead of hiring a blockbuster coach they picked a guy that would keep morale up, even though they were going to lose a lot. David Culley’s hiring wasn’t because of the race but his personality.
However the Texans shouldn’t have fired Culley so quickly considering they’re doing the exact same thing with Lovie Smith and are only doing it because of the Flores Lawsuit
Also if they hired Josh Mccown I would quit being a Texans fan until they become relevant again.
Culley also turned out to be a half decent head coach, so they really didn’t have any good reasons to fire him other than they really wanted to hire McCown but were still too scared to actually do it.
It just suggests the Texans are stupid rather than racist
Culley was supposed to be a stopgap coach, it was inevitable that he would be fired eventually, the only way Culley wasn’t going to be fired is if he greatly exceeded expectations
Also most people don’t know that Culley and Caserio were at odds with each other, while I don’t think it was the main reason he was fired, it was part of the reason he was fired so quickly.
They gave him a two year deal, which is pretty unusual for an NFL head coach. He got a lot out of the team in year one. If they were going to fire him with only a year left on his contract, they should have had more of a plan in place to replace him than just really wanting to hire Josh McCown.
I know, it’s depressing how much the organization has fallen under Easterby and Cal
I interned with them under Rick Smith. He was no better than middling as a talent evaluator, but he had his shit together in terms of actually running the team. Cal seems to want to be more involved in his dad while knowing less.
“In the lawsuit he uses text messages from Bill Belichick apparently not knowing how to use a phone and texting the wrong Brian ”
Ok, I’m the first to pile on the “old man using technology” thing in a lot of cases, but if anyone here can honestly say they’ve never texted the wrong person (or emailed or IM’ed), you all are an awfully perfect lot. I’ve spent my entire life in IT, and I’ve at times complained about a coworker TO that coworker over Skype, or been in a hurry to send an email or text and not looked closely at who’s name got autofilled.
Surely the problem isn’t that Bill texted the wrong person, it’s that Bill knew who the Giants were going to hire before Flores had even interviewed.
It’s not like BB texting Daboll correctly changes what he knew or did not know at the time of the text, only whose hands it landed in.
It’s even more insidious than that. Bill Belichick is the coach of the Patriots. How would he have known that Daboll was the coach before the interviews were even finished FOR A DIFFERENT TEAM? That’s collusion. Right there. More than one person involved in a conspiracy against an active consent decree. That and the “incentivized losing” are going to be amazing to see when discovery occurs, if the case gets this far.
I agree with you that the problem is that Bill knew who the HC was for the Giants before they even interviewed the required candidates. But the really shocking and big question is how did he know who a completely different organization was going to pick before they even finished the requisite interviews? And if he knew, who else knew? Did Roger Goodell know, for example? Did the NFL know? Should there be punishment for not reporting blatant violations like this? Are the pats in trouble for this?
Discovery on this is going to be spicy as heck.
This is the real kicker. I can see Bill accidentally texting the wrong Brian, we’ve all done stuff like that. But how did Belichick know Daboll was getting hired so early? He doesn’t work for the Giants
AND THEN lets not forget that he ALSO has the receipts on being asked to throw games in Miami, which he MAY have actually done. So now we have a head coach admitting that the owner asked him to rig contests. Makes me wonder if there were any inside betting going on.
Because in all this, the NFL would REALLY want you to forget that part too.
You couldn’t convince me that was really an accident. No one does psy ops in the NFL better than Belichick.
Good stuff. Don’t feel bad about knowing what the Bears are doing; they don’t know themselves.
I think your analysis of the Giants situation is pretty spot on. Hiring Brian Daboll is pretty defensible. I’ll add that Flores’ defenses never had a good game against Daboll’s offenses in six attempts, including giving up 56 in a must win game, where Matt Barkley (!) had multiple TD passes.
But the situation as a whole in the NFL is pretty messed up. It needs to be fixed.
Couple items to note:
Bears also hired a black GM before hiring Eberflus. They have a connection going back years as they share the same agent and have forged a strong relationship.
Eric Bieniemy has a couple problematic incidents in his past and he gets nothing. Matt Patricia has problematic incidents in his past and he gets everything and will very likely get another chance.
Lovie Smith (I love the guy) is absolutely a stopgap hire. Who the heck decides “eh, I didn’t like the head coach but the staff that HE ASSEMBLED is great so I’ll fire him after 1 year and promote from the staff of the guy I didn’t like”.
The GM the Bears hired had been at KC for 10 years. If even he didn’t want Bieniemy then maybe it’s an Eric Bieniemy issue.
The Flores firing isn’t as stupid as the media has spun it tbh. The thing with Flores people seem to have forgotten is that he really isn’t easy to get along with, especially for people on offence. This time last year, the entire sports media were mocking the Dolphins for the double OC-system Flores was going with. He did this after his second OC in as many years decided he didn’t want to deal with him any longer. Chan Gailey retired, Chad O’Shea left, and a little-remembered fact is that when Flores was hired, Jim Caldwell was brought along to be a sort of mentor figure. He then had “health issues” and left the team like a month into his tenure. Then after the double-OC thing blew up in our faces, Flores was going to be looking for his fifth OC in four years and was fired instead after a 9-8 season that included a 1-7 start. When the Dolphins first came out saying that he was fired for not being cooperative enough, this is what Dolphins fans and media thought they meant. He’s another a-hole from the Bellichick tree and every offencive coach who has worked directly under him fleeing after one year has finally caught up to him. There was also reportedly a rift between him and Tua and management chose Tua. While some of us questioned the wisdom of that, the football reasons made sense. He can’t put together an offencive staff, and the quarterback doesn’t like him. Those are understandable reasons for firing a guy.
Then they kept assassinating his character. It almost felt like they were trying to make sure the media’s proclamation that he was going to get hired immediately was going to be wrong.
And then the lawsuit drops and all of a sudden, the cooperative statements sound… different. Maybe Ross wasn’t only talking about his inability to retain OCs. Maybe he wasn’t talking about that at all. And it does seem sketchy in hindsight that they hired a minority candidate when they were going to tank.
That said, the Dolphins still have a black GM. They had a female capologist before it was cool to hire women to front offices and it was a shame she got swept in the Philbin camp and had to be let go when he was fired. McDaniel was one of the favourites before the lawsuit. I don’t think it’s fair to say he was hired as a response to the lawsuit, unless you mean because Harbaugh got spooked and left him up against Kellen Moore (lol)
Systemic racism is a societal issue. Expecting the NFL to be a leader on social issues is like expecting Wal-Mart to be a leader on labor issues. We need to treat the disease not the symptoms. I don’t give a fig if every NFL head coach or Oscar winner is white. Changing the capstone at the top of the pyramid does nothing for the structure as a whole. If 17 of 32 NFL head coaches were minorities would it change housing discrimination? Selective law enforcement? School funding discrepancies? Food deserts? Gerrymandered districts?
No, but it would make football fans less embarrassed. I guess that’s something.
The solution is to fix problems with marginalized populations in society. The NFL is irrelevant to that goal, and if the goal is reached, will come along eventually anyway.
The NFL isn’t being asked to solve those problems. The NFL is being asked to solve the problems within its own domain. ‘Sorry, racial poverty still exists’ is not a good reason to not solve those problems.
It’s always a good idea to target energy where it will make a difference.
Any progress is progress in any field of play. Doesn’t matter where the vanguard of progress shows up, if something moves forward, it helps other things move forward.
Yes there are more important places to solve racism than football, but that doesn’t mean we should just let football continue to have these problems because congress is also bad and voting rights are suppressed
It just seems superficial to expend energy and resources fixing something that will benefit at most 32 individuals in a year. Especially considering this sort of soft racism invisible barrier can be solved organically by focusing on earlier opportunity for marginalized groups rather than end point quotas.
Why are you assuming we are only talking about Head Coaches here? And do you have any sort of valid reason the NFL can’t put in policies that do effect more than just HC hiring or do you want to just keep going “don’t do anything because it might not help as much as it could”? As I pointed out in the post, a massive problem with the coaching staff in the NFL is nepotism and connections, which leaves hopeful black coaches out of the loop. The NFL could help fix this by instituting policies that effect hiring at all levels, as high as HC and as low as summer interns.
This is a culture-wide issue, but the NFL can still address the NFL side of it as best they can right now instead of just waiting for another sector of society to progress and then move forward with it. The NBA is doing a pretty decent job of it. Plus, not doing anything now effects the people who are working right now, why should they get left behind because the NFL has to wait for someone else to fix a problem they could at the very least address to some degree?
… plus if it (eventually) happens in the NFL, no other league — for that matter, no other corporate or government entity in America or the world — will have any excuse not to follow suit.
To be truly honest, Flores has kind of messed all this up.
The NFL having a race problem is the biggest slam dunk out there. Even most of the conservatives I know talk about how racist the NFL is. If any Fortune 500 company looked like the NFL at the top, they’d be in a world of trouble. Flores at the very least has some decent evidence the Rooney Rule isn’t doing anything. If he sticks to that, he’d get people to join the class action and have a shot at change. He had popular support completely on his side when the lawsuit first dropped.
Instead, it’s devolved into an airing of personal grievances.
1. The Broncos thing is very weak, and very easily explained by the flight thing.
2. The tanking thing is a very real problem but also a very separate problem, that if anything one that weakens the racial case.
3. Tom Brady? Tom Brady! TOM BRADY!
4. Complaining about not getting the Texans job, as if anything the Texans do has ever been based in logical thinking.
5. Alleging Belichick was directly involved in the Giants hiring process, which is LOL. If he secretly ran the Giants, the Pats would have 8 super bowls 😀
It’s honestly reminiscent of the whole Kaep thing. Kaep stayed silent when he was a star, but once his career was on the rocks and he was benched for some crap journeyman (Gabbert? Hoyer? I can’t remember) he started the protest thing to get back in the news. Since then, he’s taken every opportunity to make personal profit on it. And he’s not made it easy on himself to get back into football either, between the workout debacle, the AAF nonsense, and alienating the one team that tried to actually sign him. Don’t forget the awful slavery=football comps too. Kaep and people like Eric Reid seemed more concerned about generating headlines and advertising deals than actual change. Remember when Reid fought Malcolm Jenkins at the start of a game for “selling out”, because Jenkins helped to raise 100 million dollars from the NFL? That’s the sort of thing I’m talking about.
Questionable people can take good stands and start good movements. Kaep genuinely created positive change, even if his motives were questionable. I hope the same thing happens with Flores, because the NFL needs change. But I feel like Flores is making it very, very hard on himself, and his cause.
Anyways, I’m sure the net outcome is that the NFL will take away a draft pick from the Giants for this. And the WFT, just because.
And somehow the Raiders will have to fire somebody
“The NCAA is so mad at Kentucky they’re going to give Cleveland State another year of probation.”
– Jerry Tarkanian
I kind of agree that I don’t know if Flores did this quite right, but I’m also not sure how effective other methods would have been. The NFL isn’t going to change unless someone openly kicks them in the face, which is what Flores is doing, and maybe somebody like Flores with his potentially self serving methods is the only kind of person who could actually do it. He could have waited, he could have built up a coalition that filed the suit after the hiring cycle ended, but his lawsuit immediately took over the news cycle and made every hire, before AND after, get impacted.
Yeah, that’s a fair take. And doing this before the super bowl insures peak coverage too.
Just to clarify, with the Rooney rule, teams need to interview two external minority candidates. I saw people try to dismiss what was happening with the giants because they interviewed three black candidates, even though 1) only two were external (the other was Patrick Graham) and 2) the other two candidates (Flores and Frazier) were interviewed after the team allegedly already decided on hiring Daboll.
So, can we talk about the McDaniel thing? The Niners got two picks because he was hired by the dolphins to be their coach. McDaniel is 1/4 black. To anyone (including Dave it appears), he looks white. I doubt he’s faced the same systemic issues that other coaches have. I’m not sure what the solution is here, nor am I really sure if the current setup is even wrong at all, but doesn’t this feel a little weird? Seems like the old southern “if you have a drop of black blood you are a black” (except replace black with the other word).
I don’t know, why is his experience as a biracial kid growing up not looking at all like his dad’s side of the family any less valid as a minority experience as anyone else’s?
When UM hired Rich Rodriguez for their head coach they touted it as a minority hire. Had to walk it back when he was like “No, I’m white… I just have the last name Rodriquez.”
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” ~MLK
We can sue, protest, kneel, fight, riot, and vote till the nothing stands. It will not change matters of the heart. Racism doesn’t end with opposition to it as if it were an idea or action that can be punished into rightness. Racism, sexism, classism, and all other forms of hate ends when hearts are changed and we all truly see the value in all life and work to consciously love each other. This starts with forgiveness. If you truly want to end hate then show love even to those being hateful.
I’ve heard scholars that focus on these sorts of things say that it takes six generations after it was commonly accepted for most types of bigotry to die out. That would put us at around 2080-2150 for our society to outgrow attitudes towards race relations.
The sad part is that no matter how many protests we do, racism never seems to end, so it may take longer.
Goodell is an absolute douche, but I think the owners are at fault on this one. At the end of the day Goodell isn’t the one who hires the coaches, it’s the owners who should be held accountable.
Yeah but I wasn’t gonna draw every owner when Goodell is basically their patsy voicebox
fair point
You could always attempt a Cleveland Browns style hydra of the 32 owners.
I really love the irony of this.
You should do a comic about when Rooney Rule was first conceived.
It’s interesting to me in that the Rooney Rule isn’t the first NFL business practice the Rooneys pushed for that appears to be taking decades to bear any fruit. The entire NFL draft system grew out of the fact that in the 30’s the Rooneys could barely meet payroll some seasons and the Steelers (originally Pirates) were perpetual cellar dwellers and a reverse draft was meant to level the playing field by forcing top picks to go with teams like theirs. It didn’t pan out for decades because the NFL was nowhere near as big a deal till the TV age.
Rooney Rule is an imperfect approach that doesn’t seem to work. Why dont we replace that with another imperfect system that DOES work. Just institute quotas for hiring. X% of employees at (insert however many levels is reasonable for an NFL franchise) must be minorities.
Sure, its not meritocratic, but as we can see neither is the current system.
Tbh the more Flores talks the more he loses me. He started off strong with the “I don’t care if I throw away my career” and the text messages. But then it’s just one mistake after another. The Giants and the Broncos put out strong rebuttals against his claims of not taking him seriously. Heck Flores’ lawyer said that Mara’s first choice was Flores which honestly helps the Giants more than it does Flores because it means that even if Daboll was Schoen’s choice then Mara likely pushed for a Flores interview anyways. And the lawyer also sucks because he completely misused “Plessy vs Ferguson” in the statement, which is like Bill Belichick messing up Cover 2. And then the latest is Brian Flores complaining that Lovie Smith got the Texans job over him. Even the “pay to lose” allegation lost steam because Flores couldn’t provide much evidence beyond his testimony and then Hue Jackson completely torpedoed that as well.
Tbh I don’t really think there is a solution. The hope is that the system corrects itself as it did with black QBs. Remember even a decade ago there was some backlash to drafting black QBs but nowadays people don’t even blink twice and the number of black QBs keeps going up.
Flores has a case that the Fins fucked him by putting him in a shitty situation asking him to break league rules and then firing him for not being a team player. That said I have no idea what this has to do with race.
Let’s be real. There is a high probability that John Elway had a massive hangover.
Dave has drawn him this way too!
Although I think there’s a decent probability he shows up with a hangover to a lot of interviews LOL