NFL’s scoring boom contributes to drop in minority coaches

With NFL trends clearly favoring offense over defense, advancement opportunity for minority coaches has been at least temporarily slowed.

An Associated Press study of coaching staffs around the league found only four minorities at the start of the 2018 season in the stepping-stone positions of offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. That’s just 7.1 percent of 56 jobs.

The lack of minorities in the pipeline contributed to the NFL’s sharpest-ever one-year drop in minority head coaches, from eight in 2018 to an expected four in 2019. This development has caused concern among diversity advocates declaring unsatisfactory progress 16 years after the Rooney Rule was implemented.

The rule named after late Pittsburgh owner Dan Rooney requires teams to interview at least one minority candidate for each head coach or general manager vacancy.