Today is Black Monday, a day when the tenures of head coaches end and hopes arise with the ushering in of new regimes.
Arthur Smith, who went 21-30 in three seasons with the Atlanta Falcons, was the first casualty at midnight. Then, this morning, Washington released Ron Rivera, who went 26-40-1 in four seasons with the Commanders.
While more will soon follow, Black Monday is far from what it sounds like for Black coaches for over the last three years, the grim day has resulted in bleak progress.
At the end of the 2020 season, the Steelers’ Mike Tomlin and the Dolphins’ Brian Flores were the only two Black head coaches. There was a chance to add more as seven head coaching vacancies opened up but six were quickly filled and the seventh team, the Houston Texans, opted to lease by hiring David Culley, a Black coach, to be the team’s clean-up man.
At the end of the 2021 season, nine vacancies opened up but that included the firing of Flores and Culley, which left Tomlin as the NFL’s sole Black head coach. Then Lovie Smith was hired by the Texans (as its second clean-up man), Bruce Arians stepped down and handed the headset to Todd Bowles and Miami replaced Flores with the biracial “human”, Mike McDaniel. In week six, Steve Wilks joined the club when he was promoted as Carolina’s interim head coach, replacing Matt Rhule.
The next month on the first day of Black History Month, Flores dropped a bomb by filing a racial discrimination lawsuit against the NFL and its teams. The suit was later joined by Wilks and former Tennessee Titans defensive coordinator Ray Horton.
While the lawsuit continues, the end of the 2022 season brought no growth as Wilks was replaced by Frank Reich and Smith was replaced by DeMeco Ryans.
So over three seasons, Black head coaching numbers have experienced zero growth.
At the start of the 2023 season, the NFL had three Black coaches- Tomlin, Bowles and Ryans. When the season ended on Sunday, those three were joined by Raiders interim head coach, Antonio Pierce.
This weekend, Tomlin, Bowles and Ryans all made the playoffs. Even better, they all hail from the defensive side of the ball (Colin Cowherd listeners understand the significance of this).
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