thelesterlee
The worst part about the end of the NFL season is the next Monday morning when teams fire their terrible head coaches and general managers thus beginning a condescending job search with faux-interviews of black candidates that these teams have no desire to hire but have to sit down with them to follow the NFL’s Rooney Rule which requires them to interview one brown warm body.
We then get outraged when these job vacancies get filled by coach’s sons and random white guys who valeted Bill Billechick’s car once in Nantucket while equally or overqualified black candidates can’t even get eye contact in their interviews.
But what pains me most about this whole process is the lazy and boring discourse we are waterboarded with while no one provides a solution to the problem they are pretending to be passionate about.
The problem with the NFL hiring process is how rushed the whole thing is. Teams need a GM and head coach in-house by March when the NFL combine takes place. Teams are also interviewing the same handful of candidates as every other team so they quickly pull the trigger on guys just to beat out other organizations.
There’s also so few actual candidates that get real looks at these jobs. In the NBA, franchises can hire from other NBA teams, college teams, G-League teams and European and Chinese leagues. But there’s only one football league to pull potential hires from.
It doesn’t help when NFL owners keep trying to duplicate the New England Patriots success without realizing that there is only one Bill Belichick and only one Tom Brady. So they’re either hiring Patriots assistants and scouts or they’re bestowing full power and authority to one singular coach under the belief that having that tyranny will grant these coaches the freedom to become Belichick. Again, there’s only one Belichick.
That’s how you get a Matt Patricia going 13-29 as the Lions head coach when he only got the position for being the Patriots offensive coordinator despite everyone on Earth knowing that Belichick is the defensive coordinator and Patricia was just there to say yes to Bill.
Rarely does anyone ever get hired who may have an outside or new perspective. The NFL is the only place where you are rewarded for being stupid. Giants GM, Dave Gettleman, mocked the idea of value and analytics when he drafted Saquon Barkley with the no. 2 overall pick. A couple years later, Gettleman said in a preseason press conference that he ‘hired 4 computer folks’.
You expect a league to be progressive with diversity hirings when they are reluctant to look at fucking STATS.
Teams are so focused on this idea of ‘culture’ that they discredit actual useful tools for the job like intelligence or flexibility or expertise. It’s all about vibes and optics. It wasn’t shocking to see Urban Meyer be one of the worst coaches ever if you followed his college career and how many missteps he made that he never once took any accountability for…but culture! or some shit.
Brian Flores is going to be the new face of black coaches not getting a fair chance which is going to put an underserved target on his back. He’s going to be looked at as some charity. Meanwhile, some mediocre white guy will get a 10-year massive contract with no experience outside of playing a few rounds of golf with Jon Gruden once in 2017.
So everyone prepare for the most annoying media cycle of the year.
