Jonathan Kraft gets candid about NFL’s Black head coach hiring crisis

SAN FRANCISCO — Last week, New England Patriots president Jonathan Kraft engaged in a candid conversation about diversity and hiring with Kevin Warren, the Chicago Bears president and CEO.

The occasion was the 21st Annual Johnnie L. Cochran Salute to Excellence. The timing couldn’t have been more appropriate with a hiring cycle in the NFL that saw 10 head coaching vacancies, and none filled by an African American.

Among African American coaches, executives and employees throughout the NFL, the historic Blackout has been a primary topic of conversation. The dialogue between Kraft and Warren, moderated by Michael Huyghue, was no different.

This was a slap in the face that stung.

Kraft and Warren spoke on a wide range of diversity issues from the Patriots’ painful decision fire Jerrod Mayo after a season, the Rooney Rule’s ineffectiveness and the differences between young Black and white assistant coaches. Kraft’s remarks were particularly intriguing because he makes a point to stay out of the limelight, leaving the public declaration to his father, Robert Kraft, who owns the Patriots. He made the point that on a number diversity fronts the league has made progress.

Head coach had not been part of the progress.

“In March, when we go to the league meeting, and you look at the leaders from the 32 teams in the league that are in the room, it looks dramatically different than it did 10 years ago,” Kraft said. “I think the trajectory is right. We got to figure out the head coach part. I do think that no one is sitting there saying we have to prevent this from happening. I think we have to figure out why it’s not happening.”

Two hiring cycles ago, the Patriots selected Jerod Mayo to succeed Bill Belichick as the team’s head coach. Mayo, a beloved Patriots player was the Patriots first Black head coach. The appointment was written into Mayo’s contract that when Belichick left, Mayo would replace him. Kraft explained that the expectation was that, while Mayo was waiting in the wings, he would be mentored and exposed to the complexities of being an NFL head coach.

That didn’t happen.

“Bill left sooner than expected, and Jerod really hadn’t gotten the right training, but we had made a commitment,” Kraft said. “Jerod has the leadership skills and the intellect to do the job and work ethic, hands down, but he needed more training. These are complicated jobs, and he didn’t get it, and that was on us, and we didn’t see it getting better this year. So, we made the tough decision at the end of last year to make the change.”

The Patriots look brilliant because Mike Vrabel has taken the Patriots to the Super Bowl in his first year as head coach. The cause of Black coaches took a hit.

“I think Jerod, if he chooses to come back into coaching, will have learned so much from that experience, and hopefully he gets development wherever he goes to round out the areas he didn’t have, because I think he could be a really great head coach in the league,” Kraft said.

Kraft was asked about the Rooney Rule. He said he’s joined the choir of voices calling for a major overhaul in the system which requires teams to interview two minority candidates before making a head coaching or front office hire. The circumvention of the rules by NFL teams has become so egregious that Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores is suing the league in a class action discrimination suit.

“I think the intention was spot on,” Kraft said, carefully choosing his words. “I think Dan Rooney cared passionately about this issue and it mattered. I just think saying to somebody you have to do something to administratively get through a process, people come at it with the wrong mentality because they start saying, ‘We need two diverse candidates, let’s just get that out of the way.’ I don’t think that should be. I think we shouldn’t have people go at the process saying, ‘Okay, I got to deal with this administrative issue, and then I’ll get to the candidates who matter.’

“It should be ‘Okay, let’s start making a list of the highest potential candidates, and there should be lots of minorities. We need to find a way, I think — with everything being equal or close to equal — to incentivize a team to hire a Black coach.

“We want to win. Losing sucks, and if there’s somebody that can help you win — I know the other 31 teams and their owners and their senior leadership — no one’s going to say, ‘I’m not going to hire that person because I don’t like the way they look.’ I do think that could have existed in the past. I really don’t believe that today.”

Huyghue asked Kraft about the difference between young white assistants and young Black assistants. Were Black assistants automatically seen as less qualified?

“I think that a lot of the young white coaches we’ve had in our system are guys who played at the collegiate level, but probably realized while they were playing, as much as they wanted to get to the league, it probably wasn’t going to happen, and started picking the brains of their college coach, laying out a plan and a track for either GA in college or getting to go as a QC (quality control) coach in the NFL, and transitioning immediately from the from the ground level to learn the game,” Kraft said.

“What I’ve seen at the Patriots, with young Black coaches, we get more of them who have played in the league and transition to coaching but didn’t get that foundation, which I think is really important, and it’s hard, because if you’re five to 10 years older, if you’ve made some money, if you’ve done it as a player, the role, coaching, is so different, and I think they’re at a disadvantage just because they didn’t have that 20- to 25-year period of grinding it out, of learning, and of building just a foundation in the nomenclature and the way a coaching staff is put together.”

Oddly, Kraft pointed to Flores as an example of a Black coach who did it right.

“He was the antithesis of what I’ve seen in our team. And I’m not a coach, and I don’t have the technical skills — would never claim I do — but I think Brian was and will be a very good head coach in this league, and I personally am surprised he didn’t get a job this year. But Brian knew what he wanted when he was in college. I think he realized he wasn’t going to play in the league. He was an overachiever as a player at Boston College, and he has that whole tool kit. And I think if that could happen more often, that would be great.”

Yet Flores did not get a head coaching job, likely because of the lawsuit. Nor did Vance Joseph, the Denver Broncos defensive coordinator.

Kraft had another theory.

“Some of the young [white] coaches who come through our organization, disproportionately, their dad was their high school coach,” Kraft said. “I think those kids grew up around it in their homes, just watching what it was, even at the high school level.”

I trust that Kraft actually believes all of this but, with all due respect, Black assistants are not being overlooked because they started coaching late or because their fathers were not high school coaches. They are being overlooked because many of those doing the hiring tap into an old boys’ network of relationships that often do not include Black coaches.

Kraft advocated, creating yet another program — one for former NFL players that would allow them to “catch up.”

“I was thinking about how especially ex-players who want to come into coaching are excited about it, but might be in their late 20s or in their 30s,” Kraft said. “It’s hard to go back to that beginning stage. At the league level, we have these accelerator programs, and it helps get exposure, but it doesn’t really teach anybody anything.”

The NFL’s accelerator program began in 2022 and was designed to increase diversity in head coaching and executive ranks. The program was paused last spring. “Maybe the league should think about doing something for ex-players who are really serious and took the time to show they were serious,” Kraft said. “The league could run a yearlong program where they teach the full complexity of the job of a head coach, all of the administrative and management things, teach them some management skills and just give them a broad perspective that you wouldn’t get unless you had been a QC or GA guy for a few years. Then I think they’d be very hirable at the position coach level. And now they’ve gotten the foundation of that grinding it out.”

The problem with Kraft’s rationale for the lack of Black coaches is that every Black coach I spoke with over the last few days on the Seattle and New England staffs have been on a grind just as rigorous as their white counterparts. Very few spent significant amount of time on NFL rosters. What many lack is a guardian angel. The connections they do have do not bear as much fruit as their white counterparts.

A number of Black assistant coaches on the Patriots were with Vrabel when he was the Tennessee Titans head coach. I’ll be curious to see how many will become coordinators and even head coaches in the next five years.

The hard truth is that for all of the NFL programs and rules, executives who are hiring will go for the familiar. During the conversation, Warren said, “You enjoy being around people who you know and like and maybe have similar backgrounds.

Ultimately, Kraft agreed and took it a step further.

“I do think when it’s close, people go for safety,” Kraft said. “And safety has historically probably been people who are white and not Black. That’s where we have to break the log jam.”

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