People of a certain mindset might want to call it the DEI Super Bowl, this weekend’s matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles, both led by Black starting quarterbacks – Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts.
For those keeping score at home, it’s actually not the first all-Black QB Super Bowl – that would have been the Kansas City-Philly game in Super Bowl LVII featuring Mahomes and Hurts in the QB1 roles for their teams two short years ago.
Two short years ago.
Two weeks ago feels like a different America right now.
We have a president signing all sorts of executive orders banning diversity, equity and inclusion in various workplaces, intimating that people of color aren’t qualified for jobs that he’s been saying for nine years now should obviously be going to White people.
Betcha the White folks who voted for Trump because he blames everything that ails America on people of color getting good jobs didn’t think about how both of the starting QBs in the Super Bowl are Black before they read this.
They might not watch now, in protest.
Random thought: wonder how many of those folks think Tim Tebow got a raw deal.
Don’t sleep on the history
“I think it’s a step forward that we haven’t really thought about it much. I think that’s a good thing,” said Anthony Amey, a former reporter and anchor at ESPN, who is now an assistant professor of practice for sports media and analytics at Virginia Tech.
I’m jealous of the kids who get to take his classes.
We had to wing it for ourselves back when I was a young pup aspiring to break into the sports-media business.
The lack of attention to the all-Black QB Super Bowl is, indeed, a sign that we’ve come a long way from Marlin Briscoe, the first Black starting QB in the Super Bowl era, who started five games for the Denver Broncos in 1968, passing for 1,589 yards and 14 TDs, before being moved to wideout the next season.
Briscoe would finish out the remainder of his nine-year NFL career at wideout.
That forced move to another position would be a recurring theme.
Freddie Solomon was the MVP of the 1974 East-West Shrine Game as a QB, but never got a sniff at quarterback in the NFL in an 11-year career in which he accounted for 9,266 all-purpose yards and 63 touchdowns.
Tony Dungy, the first Black head coach to win a Super Bowl, was a two-year starting QB in college at Minnesota, but was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers as a defensive back, and Dungy and Warren Moon, a 1970s contemporary, have both said they went undrafted because they refused to consider a move to another position.
Moon is another case: after leading Washington to a Rose Bowl win in 1978, he not only went undrafted, but unwanted, by the NFL, so he spent the first six years of his pro career in the CFL, putting up back-to-back 5,000-yard seasons for the Edmonton Eskimos in 1982 and 1983 before finally getting an NFL gig with the Houston Oilers.
Moon would go on to pass for 49,325 yards and 291 TDs in his 17-year NFL career, and he is, to this point, the only Black quarterback in the NFL Hall of Fame, inducted in the 2006 Hall class.
“If I ever had a chance to talk to him, I would ask him this: how often do you think of the fact that had he been able to start his career in the NFL, he probably would have been the all-time NFL leading passer in terms of yards and potentially touchdowns at the point that he retired. I don’t know if that’s something that crosses many people’s minds, and I wonder how often it crosses his mind, because of the prolific numbers that he had in the Canadian Football League, not to mention the five championships won there,” Amey said.
For that matter, we’re not even really that far advanced from where we were in the 1960s when Marlin Briscoe put up 300 yards and three TDs a game as a rookie and then had to move to wideout to stay in the NFL.
Lamar Jackson, who was robbed of a third NFL MVP award in the voting announced last night, won the Heisman Trophy in 2016 at Louisville, and put up back-to-back 3,500+ passing yard, 1,500+ rushing yard seasons in college, but there was a general sentiment among NFL Draftniks that he would have to, yep, you probably remember this being said, move to wide receiver to stick and land in the NFL.
“Lamar Jackson went at the very end of the first round the year that he was drafted, so all those teams that either did not think they were capable of playing quarterback, or somehow maybe they listened to some of the many pundits who thought he should change positions. Jalen Hurts was considered one of those athletes that played the position, as opposed to someone could become a franchise quarterback,” Amey said.
“The history is rich,” Amey said. “It’s important to certainly understand and identify and acknowledge the fact that it still matters.”
It ain’t DEI
Fifteen NFL teams started a Black QB in Week 1 in 2024, and Michael Penix became the 16th when he was elevated to the QB1 job in Atlanta late in the season.
That’s literally half the league now, and in case you’re wondering, no, it’s not because of DEI.
“Coaches, executives, they’re not going to draft players, they’re not just going to put people out on the football field or any other field of play, for DEI reasons,” Amey said. “They’re not doing it for any other reasons except competence and ability, because, particularly in the case of quarterbacks, other people’s livelihoods are in their hands, literally. Football coaches and executives, their careers can be made or broken based on the play of these people that they put in the position, what many identifies the most important position in all sports, which is quarterback and the hardest to play in.”
ICYMI
Case in point there: Andy Reid.
“Andy Reid is a tremendous coach, first-ballot Hall of Fame coach, over 300 wins, I believe Sunday’s Super Bowl will tie him with Bill Belichick for the most playoff games coached in NFL history. We would think of Andy Reid completely differently had he and Brett Veach not made the decision to draft Patrick Mahomes and then sat him for essentially a full season and then started him,” Amey said.
Reid’s resume bears Amey out on that.
Reid was 130-93-1 in 13 seasons at Philadelphia, with a 10-9 record in the playoffs, but his last two Eagles teams missed the playoffs, in 2011 and 2012, and his 2012 team finished with a 4-12 record.
The pre-Patrick Mahomes part of his Kansas City tenure saw more success – four playoff appearances, a 53-27 regular-season record – but those teams had a total of one playoff win in five years before Mahomes was elevated to the starting QB job in 2016.
Reid’s record with Mahomes as the starting QB: a 90-23 regular-season record, seven straight AFC Championship Game appearances, three Super Bowl championships, a 17-3 mark in playoff games.
“Andy Reid is now considered to be probably on the Mount Rushmore of coaches, and if not, he’s certainly in the top 10,” said Amey, and it’s obviously tied to the move to go with Mahomes.
“As a starter, (Mahomes) has now been to seven straight AFC Championship Games, five Super Bowls in six years, which has never been done before, and it’s because they believed in his ability,” Amey said. “They didn’t look at him and say, We want to give this guy a shot for any reason other than we think he’s going to be a great player.
“Competence is what is sought after by these executives and by these coaches,” Amey said. “Certainly, I think for all of us, we all need an opportunity, and I think that’s something that, for whatever reason, has really been combed over by the critics of DEI, an opportunity is all that’s needed.”
The next hurdle: Black head coaches
There are currently six Black head coaches in the NFL; 11 NFL franchises have never had a Black head coach.
Meanwhile, White guys like Josh McDaniels (11-17 in two seasons at Denver, 9-16 in two seasons at Las Vegas) keep getting recycled.
McDaniels is back in the NFL as the offensive coordinator in (where else) New England, hired by another recycled White guy, Mike Vrabel (54-45 regular-season record, three playoff appearances in six seasons at Tennessee, before he was fired in 2023), who everybody knew was going to be the guy to replace Jerod Mayo (a Black coach fired after one season on the job, and a 4-13 record), but Patriots owner Robert Kraft had to go through the Rooney Rule-mandated interview process with Black candidates first.
The Pats interviewed former NFL offensive coordinators Byron Leftwich and Pep Hamilton, only because they had to, per the Rooney Rule, which Amey, and he’s not alone on this, thinks has long outlived whatever usefulness it may have had.
“For everyone whose head is not buried in the sand, these interviews in New England, pretty much everyone knew Robert Kraft wanted to hire Mike Vrabel, for instance, and whether it was the day before, a couple of days before they did so, they brought in Byron Leftwich and Pep Hamilton, two former offensive coordinators who had not coached in the NFL for years, and they brought both of them in for head coaching interviews. Well, we knew that wasn’t going to happen,” Amey said.
“If one wants to surmise that perhaps the Patriots were doing due diligence to perhaps look at them as offensive coordinator candidates, then fine. That went to Josh McDaniels, which we also probably also knew. If teams are going to make a mockery of the rule, I think it should be certainly really explored as to whether the rule should be heavily tweaked or eliminated at this point, so that other options can be considered,” Amey said.
One idea there would be the creation of more networking opportunities for top Black coaching candidates to be able to link up with team owners and top front-office personnel, both groups still tending to be supermajority White.
Efforts are under way to create these kinds of gatherings that would allow people who would not otherwise meet to be able to get to know each other, and in the process, “someone might strike or attract their attention and grab it to alert them that, you know what, this seems like a really sharp person, someone who could, at some point, become a head coach in the future. That at least puts people on the radar, and that’s something I think would be beneficial and helpful, for sure,” Amey said.
It’s all about opportunity, which is why there is a Rooney Rule in the first place, to ensure that top Black candidates get opportunities.
If you want to scream DEI right now, keep in mind, Josh McDaniels doesn’t need a Rooney Rule to get opportunities, repeated opportunities.
“The last two years, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have had first-year play-callers in Dave Canales and Liam Cohen who have become head coaches,” Amey said. “Their offenses in Tampa didn’t set the world on fire, didn’t do a ton of damage in the playoffs, and yet they became head coaches after one year of calling plays.”
Dave Canales and Liam Cohen: yeah, both are White.
“People forget that Andy Reid did not call plays in Green Bay prior to the Philadelphia Eagles hiring him as a head coach. John Harbaugh, the second-longest tenured head coach in the NFL, he was a special teams coordinator in Philadelphia before getting a head coaching job,” Amey said.
Both: White.
“With Eric Bieniemy in particular, he is someone who, I mean, if we’re being honest, he was a two-time Super Bowl winning offensive coordinator, and I just mentioned, for example, Dave Canales and Liam Cohen, who are probably really excellent offensive play-callers, neither of them got close to a Super Bowl, right, and yet they got the opportunity. Bieniemy wasn’t even considered heavily for an opportunity. He did an interview for some positions, and did not, you know, get the call, but those guys were first-time one-year play callers that received a head coaching opportunity,” Amey said.
“In Eric Bieniemy, if we’re being realistic, someone who is White, who is a two-time Super Bowl-winning offensive coordinator, you’re probably going to get an opportunity,” Amey said.
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Chris Graham
