During the league’s Annual Meeting at the Biltmore in Arizona, the head coaches that were in attendance took a group photo that really highlighted the amount of minority head coaches that are not being hired by teams in the league.
Since the hiring of Sean McVay and his success with the Los Angeles Rams that turned them into a Super Bowl contender, the league has been in a trend to find young coaches to replicate what the rams have done.
New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton believes there are flaws in the hiring process because of that pursuit.
“I think we’ve got a diversity problem, like this season, what took place, that’s hitting us square in the face,” Payton said, according to NFL.com’s Kevin Patra. “I think that not a lot was written or discussed about it. There are a handful of coaches that I know that if I was a GM who I would be interested in hiring.
“So, I think more and more it’s season-by-season and ‘I want Alvin Kamara.’ Well, you can’t have him. You can go draft 10 more running backs and be 0-for-10 trying to find him or McVay. And so I see a lot of mistakes made in that process I feel like this long in and so we’re excited to play those teams.”
Following the end of the 2018 season, eight teams have hired new head coaches with six of them being offensive specialists, and the Miami Dolphins’ Brian Flores is the only non-white new sideline head honcho.
Payton believes teams are missing out on other worthy candidates because of this new trend:
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“(Coaches) probably come of both color and they probably come on defense and on offense,” he said. “And they’re good leaders. They’re great leaders. And, so, if you say ‘well I just want the one that coaches quarterbacks and they’re on offense,’ well, then, you’re going to end up with a smaller pool and you’ll probably have less of a chance to be right, because already of eight hired there’s going to be three that survive three years.”
