The NFL has one Black head coach, it simply must do better

After Brian Flores and David Culley were fired following the end of the 2021 regular season, Jack Rathborn examines a long-standing issue in the league that urgently requires attention

David Culley’s dismissal by the Houston Texans has caused outrage around the league (Getty)

When the news trickled through on Thursday that the Houston Texans had fired David Culley there was a familiar outrage that rears its ugly head around this time every year.

With Culley discarded, days after Brian Flores was shockingly dismissed by the Miami Dolphins, the NFL was down to one Black head coach: the legendary Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers. In a league where approximately 70 percent of its players are Black, that is a problem.

It is even more painful when the criteria for ruthlessly dispatching these aforementioned coaches is evidently not applied to all coaches - see Matt Rhule and his 10-23 record with the Carolina Panthers compared to Flores’ 19-14 in that same spell.

Culley, a veteran assistant coach for 27 years at six different teams before accepting the job in Houston, was surely set up for failure. He inherited a complete mess: a roster stripped of talent and with barely any assets in terms of draft picks, thanks to the Laremy Tunsil trade, as well as the Deshaun Watson sexual assault scandal that lingered over the entire season - he would not play a single snap. And yet, he conjured up four wins, the same as Watson mustered behind elite-level quarterback play a year earlier. Culley also coached up one the most quietly impressive rookie quarterbacks of 2021 in Davis Mills.

“I’ve loved every minute, I didn’t like the losses, nobody likes the losses, but I love this job, I don’t consider this work,” Culley said with pride after a draining season. “I had people telling me they’re feeling sorry for me? Feel sorry for me? You know what I do? I’m the head coach of the Houston Texans, regardless of what the record is, and that’s a beautiful thing.”

Mike Tomlin is currently the only Black head coach in the NFL (Getty)

The silver lining from a human level is that Culley will be paid up four seasons of salary amounting to $22 million for just 12 months of work. But as outlined earlier, the broader issue is how the NFL responds to a scarcity of Black and minority head coaches. The Rooney Rule clearly isn’t enough to inspire the change needed.

“It should be a crime for the NFL to only have 1 Black Head Coach when over 70 per cent of its players are Black,” said former Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III. “There are endless amounts of qualified Black coaches who are continuously overlooked or not provided with an honest chance to succeed.”

Everybody is in agreement that one Black head coach out of 32 openings won’t do, but even if that total increases once the seven vacancies are filled, more needs to be done.

Brian Flores was fired by the Miami Dolphins, while Matt Rhule survived as head coach of the Carolina Panthers (Getty)

There are some outstanding candidates primed for an opportunity in this cycle, but skepticism remains as to whether the best candidate will win out among the competition.

Brian Flores will surely be snapped up and the Dolphins may well regret their decision to discard the first coach to secure back-to-back winning seasons since 2003. Byron Leftwich, Todd Bowles, Leslie Frazier, Aaron Glenn, Eric Bieniemy, Jerod Mayo and Vance Joseph have all been requested to interview for various head coach openings. So there is potential for the NFL to take a huge step in the coming weeks to rectify this situation. But time is running out and the world is watching the league. It’s time to fix this long-standing issue for good.