You Be The Judge

Were the owners wrong?:

The NFL hired zero Black head coaches. That tells you everything - The Athletic

On the Steelers:

As for the other six hires, well, the rationale is shaky. The Pittsburgh Steelers went for an accomplished coach with local ties in Mike McCarthy, but they abandoned a formula — a young, defensive coach with CEO potential who can stick around for a long time — in what seems to be a desperate attempt to develop a quarterback to be identified later. For a team that has had three head coaches since 1969 (and won six Super Bowls), it’s a short-term decision that warrants a red flag.

 

The owners likely hired some great coaches and some horrible coaches.

The issue regarding not any (enough? some?) African-American head coaches and coordinators is that the NFL is a who you know game. Right now if you had a cup of coffee one time with Shanahan or McVay, you get a job. But not only that, it is who you're old man worked with as well. We are starting to see generational NFL coaching families. For whatever the reason those are primarily white faces.

I think rather than pushing that X or Y candidates have to be interviewed for A or B position, the NFL has to break the hold that generational nepotism and familiarity has on hiring. There is just not enough points of entry into the system. It becomes a closed network of the same voices and faces.

I wonder if a "better" initiative would be to reward or incentivize teams to hire a diverse group of candidates at "lower level" positions on coaching staff. Like for every Scarnecchia who has a job because of his old man's connections that holds some amorphous job title, you have to hire someone that has little connection to the existing coaching network. Let new blood get in the game. Then the league might be able to grow a pool of candidates for coaching jobs at all levels of an NFL staff that just organically got more heterogenous.

 

Nope.


All jobs are a component of competency, skill and merit. Anything beyond those three will not yield results whatsoever. Choose the person based on those abilities.


Never select a person in a highly sought after job based solely on factors that cannot be controlled.

 

I think you've nailed it.

The thing that always gets me is that if I was in a position of power to hire coaches, I would be looking for someone with a perspective and looking to innovate in a way that maybe nobody else could. A young guy would be exactly what I would be looking for. I never specifically look at someone's skin, but there are so many good, young black coaches that have emerged in the last 20 years or so that it is more likely that I would hire a black man than ever before.

I would want Mike Tomlin with a more innovative offensive approach to the game, or at least a young defensive mind that understands how the latest innovative offensive systems are more difficult to defend and want them to be how THEY attack other defenses.

If you use that criteria and don't rely on simply who you are comfortable with, that's how you push the limits more and it really fosters creativity. I want to have something different. Different and sophisticated is hard to deal with. I think if your mind works like that, more black men will get hired because the reasons you list above aren't being followed.

 

Only speaking to the Steelers part and that is a bunch of bull**** written by an idiot

 

All of the above parameters are why I’m so down on the current hiring cycle. My comments are not a defense or support of Tomlin or the outgoing staff. But a full throated critique that the new staff is just the same old same old bunch of familiar points of view.

where is the fresh take or new idea come from on this staff?

 

I have no idea, but I won't judge until I see it.

Graham may not put something on the field that has never been seen before, but he is at least willing to give an offense so many different looks and will game plan each week to try to attack their weaknesses that it should count for something. The days of just running the same looks and the same formations over and over again can work if you are just physically superior, but that's where using scheme to confuse can give a team an advantage and force mistakes.

 

Valid points and I’m not saying that can’t or won’t happen. Tried to acknowledge as much in the other thread.

what I do strongly believe and am willing to judge right now before on field results is that I think the process was flawed. Any coaching staff that was hired and then basically aligns with a list that the guys without any access at Steelers Depot can piece together from Googling past coaching staffs is a process that failed to seek new ideas and perspectives.

as you stated above, that’s just bad for business.

 

The article is nothing more than a "Gotcha Piece" with "Victimhood Mentality" sprinkled into it.

 

Having had a black head coach for the past 19 years, and one who wasn't fired but left on his own terms, I would think the Steelers would be the one team that would be beyond reproach in that area.

 

And while we're on the subject, it wasn't long after Tomlin resigned that a couple posters came out with the idea that due to the Rooney Rule, Art was surely going to hire a black head coach. Well, here we are with Mike McCarthy who looks pretty white to me. Can we finally dispense with the idea that the Rooney Rule has ever had any weight in the Steelers' head coaching hiring decisions?

 

DEI does not equal most qualified. People have been passed up for promotions because of that stigma.

 

I see this post going south

I’m deleting my response so as not to ad unintended fuel

 

There's only so many DeMeco Ryans'......

 

One of the worst things that's happened in business is DEI or anything rooted in that philosophy.

Imagine if The Godfather was made today. Marlon Brando and James Caan would not have been cast as Don Corleone and Sonny Corleone because they weren't Italian.

If Mike Tomlin had been a coach with any team but the Steelers or Bengals, he would have been fired after 3 years. Steelers for their loyalty and structure. Bengals because Mike Brown is a cheap asshat.

Tony Dungy went into the Hall of Fame because he was a pioneer, not a great coach. Tomlin will go to the Hall of Fame because he won his first 4 years with a ready made team. When he had his own, he won the exact amount of playoff games in the last 15 years as Mike Vrabel did in 3 weeks this seasons.

Results never lie.

 

Truth usually does that.

 

Im going to assume all the coaches the steelers have hired in the modern era was based purely on merit and ability. As it should be.

 

Dan Rooney clearly felt there was a problem in the NFL. Hence, he proposed and got his rule passed.

 

Um, okay.

 

Joel

Are you the idiot who wrote it

You seem defensive

 

Dan Rooney was a visionary. Great leader, great man.

 

Your criteria leaves no room for fresh blood

 

On the Godfather part...I remember hearing someone speak about people getting upset because some actor got a role and it was considered by some that the role should have been filled by a person of the characters ethnicity. The speaker went on to say how that's not acting. Portraying something you are not is acting. I thought, he makes a valid point.


As for the thread, never once did it enter my head during the HC search about anything other than, get a good HC.

 

Agreed. And the rule has not accomplished its purpose. It makes one wonder if the rule is not an effective corrective measure. I honestly believe that to create more hiring at the top levels you have to create more opportunities at entry points in the coaching ladder.