How NFL teams use Black coaches to clean up their messes

With the losses mounting and their top two quarterbacks injured, the Carolina Panthers this month did what flailing NFL franchises often do: They fired their coach.

The Panthers’ search for a new coach is likely to span months and will help shape the future of the franchise. But for the rest of this season, owner David Tepper needed someone to keep things from falling even further apart. After dismissing Matt Rhule, he turned to Steve Wilks, who was coaching the team’s secondary, to be its interim leader.

It’s a daunting position in which success is a rarity for any coach. But like most things in NFL coaching circles, it is even more daunting for a Black coach. An analysis of coaching data by The Washington Post shows that the biases entrenched in NFL decision-making also make it harder for Black coaches to capitalize on interim auditions.

With only 32 head coaching positions in the NFL, every hire is scrutinized, but the Panthers’ decision will be even more closely monitored. Wilks, who is Black, earlier this year joined former Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores in an unprecedented class-action racial discrimination lawsuit against the NFL and its teams. Wilks was hired as coach of the Arizona Cardinals in 2018 but was fired after one season with a 3-13 record. The lawsuit alleges Wilks was a “bridge coach” who was “not given any meaningful chance to succeed.”

Wilks declined to be interviewed for this story, but when asked at a news conference following his promotion whether he had assurances from the Panthers that he would be seriously considered for the full-time role when the season ends, he replied, “To be quite honest with you, I’m not really looking beyond [the present].”

Tepper was noncommittal, telling reporters that Wilks would be considered “if he does an incredible job.”

The Panthers are 1-1 under Wilks, but the team traded star running back Christian McCaffrey for four draft picks, effectively signaling that ownership is prioritizing future success.

The experiences of Black interim coaches call into question whether the Panthers will consider Wilks a legitimate candidate. Though Black coaches are vastly underrepresented among the league’s head coaches and coordinators, they have historically been better represented among the league’s interim coaches, The Post found. The trend echoes a corporate America phenomenon known as the “glass cliff,” in which women and people of color are called on to lead in times of crisis.

It also, some Black NFL veterans said, allows teams to get credit for hiring Black leaders when the stakes are low. “It might pad some of those stats” that measure the league’s diversity, said Terry Robiskie, a Black former coach who twice served as an interim coach but never received a full-time job. He said his interim stints should not count when the league tallies its Black head coaches.

“I think it’s a way to say we gave a guy a chance, to be honest with you,” said Maurice Jones-Drew, a Black former NFL running back who played under a Black interim coach, Mel Tucker, with the Jacksonville Jaguars. “We’re giving him an opportunity, even though it’s a s---ty opportunity.”

If an interim job is indeed an audition for a full-time one, Black coaches are held to a higher standard.

[How the NFL blocks Black coaches]

Typically inheriting losing teams midseason, interim coaches rarely perform well, amassing a combined winning percentage of .347 since 1990. For White coaches, The Post found, performing this poorly appears to have little impact on their ability to turn their interim experience into a full-time job: Ten of 32 White interims who replaced full-time coaches midseason were promoted to the permanent job, with a combined winning percentage of just .361.

For Black coaches, though, the bar is higher. Just three of 14 Black interim coaches, not including Wilks this season, were retained on a permanent basis — and all three led their struggling teams to records of .500 or better.

“We hope that there’s not a double standard,” Troy Vincent, the NFL’s executive vice president of football operations, said in an interview, adding that the league must continue “reimagining” hiring practices to promote fairness.

When decision-makers look beyond tangible measures of coaching ability, such as performance, team improvement and experience, Vincent said, “this is where nepotism and cronyism shows up.”

A tryout or stopgap?

White interim coaches have been given the permanent job after varying levels of success, including seven times with a losing record as the interim. Meanwhile, the three promoted Black interims each had at least a .500 record.

 

The size of the circles indicates the number of games as the interim coach.

The white stroke indicates interim coaches

who were promoted to the full-time role.

White

interim

coaches

Black

interim

coaches

Winning

percentage

0.00

.250

Leslie

Frazier

.500

Mike

Singletary

Romeo

Crennel

.750

1.00

Sources: Post reporting, Sports Reference

A tryout or stopgap?

White interim coaches have been given the permanent job after varying levels of success, including seven times with a losing record. Meanwhile, the three promoted Black interim coaches each posted at least a .500 record.

 

The size of the circles indicates the number of games as the interim coach.

The white stroke indicates interim coaches who

were promoted to the full-time role.

White

interim

coaches

Black

interim

coaches

Winning

percentage

0.00

.250

Leslie Frazier

.500

Mike Singletary

Romeo Crennel

.750

1.00

Sources: Post reporting, Sports Reference

A tryout or stopgap?

White interim coaches have been given the permanent job after varying levels of success, including seven times with a losing record. Meanwhile, the three promoted Black interim coaches each posted at least a .500 record.

 

The size of the circles indicates the number of games as the interim coach.

The white stroke indicates interim coaches who were promoted to the full-time role.

Winning

percentage

0.00

.250

.500

.750

1.00

White interim

coaches

Black interim

coaches

Leslie

Frazier

Mike

Singletary

Romeo

Crennel

Sources: Post reporting, Sports Reference

A tryout or stopgap?

White interim coaches have been given the permanent job after varying levels of success, including seven times with a losing record. Meanwhile, the three promoted Black interim coaches each posted at least a .500 record.

 

The size of the circles indicates the number of games as the interim coach.

The white stroke indicates hired interim coaches.

Winning

percentage

0.00

.250

.500

1.00

.750

White interim

coaches

Black interim

coaches

Leslie

Frazier

Mike

Singletary

Romeo

Crennel

Sources: Post reporting, Sports Reference

Black former interim coaches stress the difficulty of the job and say the experience differs significantly from a full-time role, making it an unfair gauge of their ability. Yet the wins and losses of interim coaches are recorded in NFL history the same way as those of full-time coaches, so they are often included among the count of Black head coaches.

Twenty-five Black men have served as head coaches in the league’s modern history. Just 20 have been full-time coaches.

As more coaches inevitably are fired and replaced by interims this season and with the threat of the Flores lawsuit looming, the hiring practices of the NFL’s mostly White owners will remain under intense scrutiny. Nearly two decades after the league implemented its celebrated “Rooney Rule,” requiring franchises to interview candidates of color for head coaching jobs, Black coaches remain disadvantaged. They have been hired at a lower rate over the past five years than at any other time since the introduction of the Rooney Rule, The Post found, and they recently have been fired, on average, after better performances than their White peers.

In interviews with The Post, NFL officials acknowledged the league’s shortcomings but touted its efforts to improve diversity, including by strengthening the Rooney Rule to require additional interviews and to cover more roles. Before 2020, an NFL team could adhere to the policy simply by interviewing its own Black interim coach.

[How The Post gathered and analyzed data for its series on Black NFL coaches]

Cyrus Mehri, an attorney who co-founded the Fritz Pollard Alliance, a nonprofit that monitors the NFL’s diversity efforts, and who was integral to the introduction of the Rooney Rule, said the organization historically has welcomed opportunities for coaches of color to serve in interim roles, viewing them as a chance “to shine against tremendous adversity and to help break down the barriers of racial bias.” He points to the handful of Black coaches who used the job as a steppingstone to full-time roles.

But he said The Post’s analysis, which found drastically different performance levels are needed for Black and White interim coaches to land full-time jobs, is “devastating.”

“It just shows again,” Mehri said, “that Black coaches are held to a higher standard.”

Set up to fail

Since 1990, the year after Art Shell became the first Black head coach in the modern era of the NFL, Black men have accounted for only about 13 percent of full-time head coaching positions despite as much as 70 percent of the league’s players being Black.

Their representation isn’t much better at offensive and defensive coordinator, the NFL’s most sought-after and highest-paying assistant jobs. Black men held about 17 percent of those roles from 1999 to 2021, according to data compiled by The Post and the Global Sport Institute at Arizona State University.

But Black coaches have held 31 percent of the interim head coaching roles since 1990. That’s a relatively large share that would be significant — and could even be a welcome trend — if not for the tougher road Black coaches face in securing top jobs on a permanent basis and for how it promotes the suggestion that more Black men have been head coaches.

“It’s like you trust me to take over a team in the toughest situation, but you don’t trust me or think that I can get the job done or don’t think the fans are going to want to see me as the head coach full time,” Tucker said, referencing the disparity between Black interim coaches and Black full-time coaches. “That’s a tough pill to swallow.”

There can be value in holding an interim role, Vincent noted. “You are the leader every day, leading the organization,” he said. “You’re talking to the media. You’re coming up with game plans.”

But a team in need of an interim coach typically is a team in disarray. And the assistant promoted to interim coach and charged with steadying the ship is at a natural disadvantage: Interim coaches can’t rely on months of offseason work developing a culture, implementing a strategy and designing a playbook. They don’t hire their assistants or spend time constructing a roster that aligns with their vision. And usually they must scramble to prepare for a game that’s less than a week away.

LEFT: Mel Tucker went 2-3 as the Jacksonville Jaguars' interim coach in 2011. (Sam Greenwood/Getty Images) RIGHT: Tucker is one of five Black men who served as an interim NFL coach but never as a full-time head coach. (Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)

Tucker, now the head coach at Michigan State University, is one of the five Black men who served as an interim NFL coach but never as a full-time coach. Being Jacksonville’s interim leader for five games was the “hardest thing I’ve ever done in coaching,” he said.

Anthony Lynn, the interim coach for the Buffalo Bills in 2016, called the quick ascension to the role with one game left in the season a “terrifying” experience. Robiskie said usually with interim stints, “this ship is sinking” — or “maybe this ship is already at the bottom of the ocean.”

That’s why they rarely win. Since 1990, interim coaches have combined for a 111-209 record. Yet Vincent said coaches see these difficult jobs as ones they can’t turn down. They worry about the perception of not accepting an opportunity to serve as a head coach, and they cling to hope that the stint could be a legitimate audition for the permanent job.

Black coaches might be more likely to land these roles because “we normally have to control the locker room,” said Hue Jackson, the former full-time coach of the Oakland Raiders and Cleveland Browns. “We normally have the strongest relationships — not that our Caucasian brothers don’t, but we relate to so many different guys on so many different levels.”

Albert Connell, a wide receiver for Washington in 2000, said Robiskie, who had been elevated from passing game coordinator after the late-season firing of Norv Turner, became a “go-to” coach for most of the team’s Black players, available anytime they needed to talk. Those three games were the only time Connell played for a Black head coach in his football career. Connell, who is Black, considered Robiskie a father figure.

When he took over, “we wanted to play our best ball just to make sure Coach Robiskie would stay around or he would get this opportunity,” Connell said. But Washington went 1-2, and the franchise then hired Marty Schottenheimer, who lasted just one season.

LEFT: Connell said the team “wanted to play our best ball” for Robiskie. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post) RIGHT: Robiskie left the franchise after his three-game stint as interim coach and later served in the same role with the Cleveland Browns. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)

The increased tendency to hire a Black coach in a moment of turbulence mirrors the “glass cliff” theory, coined by University of Exeter researchers Michelle Ryan and Alexander Haslam. Their paper, published in 2005, found companies that had appointed women to their boards were more likely to have struggled in recent months than those that appointed men. Additional research has found a glass cliff exists in areas beyond business — including law, politics and sports — and sometimes includes people of color in the group more likely to land precarious positions. In those difficult circumstances, leaders face a greater risk of failure.

In the NFL, you can see the “glass cliff” in the relative prevalence of Black interim coaches. You also can see it in team owners’ willingness to bypass top assistants when looking for a temporary leader.

As the highest-ranking assistants, offensive and defensive coordinators are the most obvious candidates to replace a fired head coach — and the vast majority of coordinators are White. In full-time hirings, NFL coordinators are the most popular picks, while lower-level assistants, including position coaches with an assistant head coach title, have been chosen just 10 percent of the time since 1990. But when looking for an interim coach, owners pass over coordinators and hire lower-level assistants nearly half the time. Far more lower-level assistants are Black.

Alison Cook, a professor of management at Utah State University whose research focuses on gender and diversity in the workplace, said a difficult time for an organization can prompt it to look outside the people it views as “traditional” leaders.

“They see qualities that, normally in good times, they don’t perceive those as maybe the best leadership qualities or what would be the most effective leader. But in a time of crisis, they say, ‘This is who we need,’ ” said Cook, who with colleague Christy Glass studied college basketball coaching hires and found coaches of color were more likely than White coaches to be hired when the team had struggled.

George Cunningham, chair of the sports management department at the University of Florida, and other researchers found women were more likely to be hired for an NCAA women’s soccer coaching job when the team had performed poorly. After Wilks’s appointment as interim coach of the struggling Panthers, Cunningham said, he “certainly enters a situation that reflects a glass cliff.”

“You’re kind of set up to fail,” Cunningham said. “You’re already in a tough spot. And the short audition time, whether it’s two or three games or even a half a season, is just not putting you in a good spot to succeed.”

Love from the locker room

In 2011, when Jaguars owner Wayne Weaver asked Tucker to take over as interim coach, Weaver assured him that he would get an interview and a “fair shot” at the job, Tucker said.

Struggling teams, Tucker noted, sometimes breed locker rooms where coaches can walk through and find players booking flights for offseason trips. But Tucker’s group in Jacksonville mustered a 2-3 finish — an above-average performance for an interim coach and one that showed the players remained motivated.

If that wasn’t convincing enough, his players loved and respected him, too. When Jones-Drew, the NFL’s leading rusher that year, spoke with the team’s general manager during an end-of-season meeting, the running back said he wanted Tucker to be named the full-time coach. Teammates told Jones-Drew that they had offered the same endorsement.

“We felt like we could turn this thing around with Mel as the guy,” Jones-Drew said.

But after an ownership change, the Jaguars hired Mike Mularkey, who in 2012 notched as many wins in 16 games as Tucker had in five. It was, at the time, the worst season in franchise history, and Mularkey was fired after its conclusion.

Jones-Drew looks back and tries to rationalize the team’s decision not to hire Tucker.

“If we’d have went 4-1,” he said, “that would have been different.”

He’s right — but only when it comes to Black interim coaches.

Since 1990, White interim coaches have landed full-time jobs with records ranging from 0-1 (Mike Tice with the Minnesota Vikings in 2001) and 1-8 (Dave McGinnis with the Cardinals in 2000) to 7-2 (Bruce Coslet with the Cincinnati Bengals in 1996). Seven of the 10 White interim coaches hired full-time had a worse winning percentage than Tucker.

The three Black coaches who have been elevated from interim to full-time roles are Romeo Crennel with the Kansas City Chiefs, Leslie Frazier with the Vikings and Mike Singletary with the San Francisco 49ers. They did so only after performances that made it all but impossible for their teams’ White owners to ignore them, posting a 10-8 record during their interim tenures and far exceeding the combined winning percentage of their predecessors.

LEFT: Mike Singletary parlayed his 5-4 interim record with the San Francisco 49ers in 2008 into the full-time job. (Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images) RIGHT: Leslie Frazier's 3-3 tenure as interim coach of the Minnesota Vikings in 2010 led to the full-time role. (Jerry Holt/Star Tribune/Getty Images)

“Interim is not the best way to get one of those head coaching jobs,” said Frazier, who had a 21-32-1 record over four seasons with the Vikings. “It’s hard to separate yourself from the past. So your leash is a little bit shorter in my mind, based on my own experience. But you’ve got to win, and you’ve got to win early.”

Only two coaches, both White, have gone on to have long careers as the head coach of the team that made them an interim. Jason Garrett led the Dallas Cowboys to a 5-3 finish in 2010, then spent nine additional seasons as their head coach. Jeff Fisher turned his 1-5 performance as the interim coach in 1994 into a tenure that lasted 16 more seasons and spanned the Houston Oilers’ move to Tennessee, highlighting the value of an organization gambling on a coach after an unsuccessful interim stint — an opportunity Black interim coaches have never been afforded.

It’s difficult to discern exactly how an interim stint might help or hinder someone’s head coaching ambitions. Four Black men have served as interims on their way to becoming full-time NFL coaches for the first time. But five others, including three who are no longer coaching, have never received a full-time opportunity.

Cook, the Utah State professor who hasn’t researched this exact circumstance, said an owner may dismiss a White interim coach’s poor performance and reassure himself along these lines: “He did the best he could with what he had. Here, we have the resources for him. He’s really going to fit well.” But for a Black coach, his poor performance as an interim coach could be interpreted as a reason he might fail if offered the full-time job. It is human nature, Cook said, for decision-makers to find evidence in favor of their implicit bias and against others.

“You give a guy a head [coaching] job in mid-December for three weeks and then you tell him, ‘Okay, show me you can be a head coach,’ ” Robiskie said. “... What’s fair about that? How can a guy be a head coach for three weeks and prove that he’s capable of being a head coach?”

Turning it around

As Wilks, a Charlotte native, took control of the struggling Panthers, he said he was optimistic about the rest of the season. He said he believes the team, which was 1-4 at the time and down to its third-string quarterback, has the talent to succeed but just hadn’t finished games well. Wilks fired the defensive coordinator in hopes of improved performance, and he took on the role earlier than most previous Black interim coaches, who had averaged 5.4 games.

“We’ve got some time to turn it around,” Wilks said ahead of the first of 12 games in charge.

But days later, during a game against the Los Angeles Rams, Wilks had to call upon a fourth quarterback — one who had just been elevated from the practice squad — after yet another injury. The Panthers’ halftime lead disappeared, and they dropped to 1-5 with a 24-10 loss. A day after the game, the Panthers traded one of their top wide receivers, Robbie Anderson. The organization then traded McCaffrey, a move that painted a bleak outlook for the rest of the season. Yet in Carolina’s first game without its star running back, the Panthers dismantled the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — a rare moment of positivity for an organization that had lost 12 of its previous 13 games.

“That definitely wasn’t a team out there today [that] was trying to tank it,” Wilks said after the 21-3 victory.

In the locker room afterward, the players shouted and bounced in celebration, and they crowded around Wilks to hug him.

Wilks must keep his team afloat for two more months. No matter how far the Panthers may fall from playoff contention, this is his audition. This partial season with a depleted roster is his chance to prove his head coaching ability — even though history suggests the Panthers probably will look elsewhere to find a successor.

“Every situation is a little bit unique and different,” Vincent said. “But the reality is that individual is an interim, and most of the fan base and the front office is thinking: ‘We’ll have an opportunity to bring in a new person. We just want to make sure we can get through this season at least respectfully.’ ”

Wilks, a 53-year-old who has been a coach for nearly three decades, is one of just 25 Black men who have held a head coaching position in the NFL’s modern era. Yet his two chances to lead teams have come with the Cardinals, who fired him after one year, and now with a Carolina team on pace to finish near the bottom of the league.

In many ways, Wilks’s career path epitomizes the hurdles that Black coaches face in reaching and holding on to these top jobs: As the interim, the job is his, but is it really a head-coaching opportunity?

Jones-Drew didn’t believe Tucker had a chance equivalent to that of a full-time coach in Jacksonville: “I would say no, he didn’t. In order to be an NFL head coach, you have to be able to implement your plan and your vision. How can you do that in five games?”

The NFL record book disagrees. Black interim coaches accumulate wins and losses just as their full-time peers do, albeit under more chaotic circumstances. By the official tally, they are head coaches.

But many don’t feel they truly reached the sport’s peak.

“My name is in the book,” Robiskie said. “Terry’s been an interim head coach. I haven’t been a head coach.”