If Eric Bieniemy Is Passed Over Again This Offseason, Then I'm Boycotting The NFL
You may have read the headline and thought, “Wow, that’s a strong reaction to have.” It’s not as surprising if you consider how this article and the Passing the Baton column came to be.
Let's Actually Incentivize Teams to Hire Black Coaches So We Can All Go Home
Nearly 100 years after Fritz Pollard became football’s first Black head coach, attempts to improve opportunities for black coaches and GMs have only made things worse. While it doesn’t feel great to do so, the time is now to actually incentivize teams.
This was in response to an initiative that was eventually sidelined that would’ve incentivized teams to hire more Black NFL head coaches. In the article, I went over the beginnings of the Rooney Rule policy and talked about Sherman Lewis, one of the more infamous cases of a deserving coach spurned of an opportunity to become one of 32. How poetic is it that almost a year later, these words seem prophetic: “Sherman Lewis wasn’t the first and the current offensive coordinator of the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs, Eric Bieniemy, won’t be the last.”
The frustration over how blatant this all seems to be is what has me fuming. Coming off that article, the Chiefs were Super Bowl champions something that even his predecessors — Doug Pederson, then the head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, and Matt Nagy, the head coach of the Chicago Bears — had not accomplished. But looking a bit deeper into those early Chiefs years under Andy Reid points to something more disturbing: that Pederson and Nagy essentially got head coaching looks solely off of Bieniemy’s doing.
Let’s back up. Eric Bieniemy, a former NFL running back under Andy Reid, joined his former coach as a running backs coach in 2013. At the time, Doug Pederson was the Chiefs’ offensive coordinator and Matt Nagy was the team’s quarterbacks coach. The team was led by Alex Smith, who had been ousted from the San Francisco 49ers due to the emergence of Colin Kaepernick. Smith would be a perfect fit for Reid’s patented West Coast offense which seeks to move the ball down the field in smaller chunks; calling for precision, accuracy and a quick release from the team’s signal caller. However, the 2013, 2014 and 2015 Kansas City Chiefs made their bread and butter running the football. Bieniemy’s backfield yielded the team two 10th place finishes in rushing yards in 2013 and 2014, a sixth place finish in 2015 and fifth, third and first place in rushing touchdowns, respectively. The 2015 season where they ranked first in the league featured a trio of Charcandrick West and Spencer Ware spelling lead back Jamaal Charles. The passing yards and touchdowns in those seasons never topped the top-15 of the league. Doug Pederson’s Chiefs teams registered a lone playoff win, yet his resume was deemed good enough for Reid’s former team to nab him as their next head coach.
Matt Nagy’s situation feels even crazier. In 2016, the former quarterbacks coach was elevated to co-offensive coordinator with Brad Childress. Through the air, the team was more of the same; ranking 19th in yards, 24th in touchdowns and 20th in total yards. Even Bieniemy’s rushing attack took a hit without Jamaal Charles in tow ranking 15th in yards and 13th in touchdowns behind the West-Ware duo. After posting a 12-4 record, the Chiefs would go on to lose in the Divisional round to the Steelers. The following year, the OC position was Matt Nagy’s alone. This represented great improvements with passing game as the team cracked the top-10 in passing yards, TDs and total yards; however, Bieniemy’s backfield also returned to form ranking ninth in rushing and leading the league in yards per attempt behind breakout sensation Kareem Hunt’s 1327 yards and 8 TD performance. After going 10-6 and losing a close contest to the Titans in the Wild Card, the Chicago Bears had seen enough to select Matt Nagy to fill their head coaching vacancy.
So 5 seasons between the two, a 1-4 playoff record, and only one season of a top-10 passing attack landed these two head coaching gigs; with the only consistent bright spot being the team’s run game, coordinated by Bieniemy. Hmmm…
With Nagy gone, Bieniemy took over the reigns. Alex Smith is traded to Washington as the team feels its 10th overall selection in the 2017 NFL Draft, Patrick Mahomes, is ready to be set loose. Let the fireworks begin!
In his first season as OC, the Chiefs led the league in total yards and passing touchdowns, finished third in passing yards, and seventh in rushing touchdowns. Mahomes threw for over 5,000 yards with 50 passing touchdowns and was named the season’s MVP. Going 12-4 in the regular season, the team got their first Divisional round win in the Reid era against the Colts before falling to the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship game. What about the following season, where a QB is expected to experience a sophomore slump? Another 12-4 record, sixth in total yards, fifth in passing yards and touchdowns, 4,000 yards for Mahomes and a Super Bowl win. Other OCs get heaps of praise for doing a fraction of this with their QBs, but for Bieniemy the credit gets put on Mahomes and Reid….
Let’s fast forward to this offseason. Coming into the playoffs the Jacksonville Jaguars, Houston Texans, Detroit Lions, Atlanta Falcons, Los Angeles Chargers and New York Jets all had head coach vacancies. In addition to Bieniemy, whom had been a Rooney Rule hotshot the last coaching carousel season, other surging offensive coordinators joined the ranks too, including Tennessee’s Arthur Smith and Buffalo’s Brian Daboll.
And rightfully so, Smith has been the architect of the Titans offense centered around Ryan Tannehill’s second-act and Derrick Henry’s absolute dominance as a running back. The former TE coach has helped produce a top-3 rushing attack while Tannehill enjoys career years behind a 22:6 and 33:7 TD:INT ratio. Smith is actually perhaps the best example of an OC having a Bieniemy-like run and being rewarded immediately with a head coaching job. As we await to see how Tennessee’s 2020-21 postseason concludes, the one Cinderella year was apparently good enough, whereas Bieniemy has done this act year-after-year. Smith, and not Bieniemy, is the favorite in Atlanta — a team that is most likely looking at starting over at the QB position next season. One of these coaches has experience with a rookie QB, while the other has not. Makes sense, right?
And how about Brian Daboll? Coming to Buffalo from the University of Alabama, Daboll was tasked with the development of Josh Allen. A QB with an impressive mobile skillset — the common joke is that he’s a Black QB in a white body LOL — Daboll deserves credit from Allen’s rookie year of 10 TDs and 12 INTs to back-to-back seasons with a 20:9 and 27:10 TD:INT ratio. Besides breaking Buffalo’s postseason drought in 2019, the real season of note for Bills Mafia has been this one; finishing top-3 in total yards, passing yards and passing TDs. All of this is apparently good enough to be the rumored favorite to land the Chargers job. This fit seemed most up Bieniemy’s alley with a QB that has many similarities to Patrick Mahomes, a rushing attack that was formidable pre-injury, and the familiarity Bieniemy has coaching in the AFC West for the past 7 seasons.
Hmmm…makes you think, right?
But the biggest slap in the face, the one blow that has conjured up such a strong emotion and reaction is news of Detroit’s leading man. Detroit is in a similar situation as Atlanta where it seems as if it is time for the team to part with its franchise QB and see what can be returned for a veteran QB that can possibly take a contender far into the playoffs. While Detroit might not have been the best place for Bieniemy, it would’ve made sense with the Lions having the seventh pick in the upcoming draft to deal Stafford and let Bieniemy start a new era with a rookie. With defensive Jedi-in-training Matt Patricia not quite working out “culturally”, and on the field, new GM Brad Holmes — a brotha — might decide to change course and bring in a candidate like Bieniemy whom would command respect in the locker room, right?
Dan Campbell is a tight ends coach. Not one of those special teams coordinator types that gets everyone going and viewed as a master motivator. Nope. A tight ends coach. If Dan Campbell sounds familiar to you, you must have remembered him filling in as the interim head coach for the 2015 Miami Dolphins after the team “parted ways with” Joe Philbin. Surely, Campbell was heralded for the job he did and how the players rallied around him to finish the season 6-10 after a 1-4 start. But again, this pales in comparison to Eric Bieniemy’s track record. And even as a tight ends coach, it’s not like Campbell’s results have been particularly “sexy”. He’s had some great tight ends under his stead: Anthony Fasano, Charles Clay and Ben Watson between Miami and New Orleans. But its not like any of them have had All-Pro type seasons where this is the greatest tight end coach in all the land and he deserves a gig over an offensive coordinator that is objectively the best in the game.
I get it, owners may not know what they’re doing or what to look for when they’re conducting searches for head coaches. This is why many may resort to outsourcing the search to a firm, that will do much of the due diligence needed to wade through the many candidates available. But what good is this if teams are going to pull a Houston and ignore their recommendation? Houston further wished to cement itself as a dysfunctional franchise by continuing to anger its star, DeShaun Watson, whom allegedly desired for the team to interview Bieniemy, to which the team seemed against doing until recently.
And lastly, we have the Philadelphia Eagles. A team that waited until after the conclusion of the regular season to make a surprising decision to “part ways with” Doug Pederson. This would be an interesting landing spot given Andy Reid’s history with the franchise and with Pederson also hailing from his Reid’s ‘coaching tree’; something that has come under fire due to how Pederson and Nagy have fared of late — which is a blatant ignorance of the long leash Belichick disciples continue to get. Adding in, the Eagles’ conundrum at the QB position between Carson Wentz and Jalen Hurts this would be a splash hire to come in and address specific issues Philadelphia is facing offensively.
So it would appear that the Eagles, or the Texans if they can get their act together, stand between the NFL and I next season. With Monday being the day we observe Dr. Martin Luther King Day, it seems appropriate to take a stand against injustice. Football is my favorite sport and it would hurt to be away especially when my Tampa Bay Buccaneers are finally a playoff-contending team. But the anger I feel in what feels purposeful and intentional — in a time where Black issues and race relations are at the forefront of our nation thanks to 45 and his cult — this must be done. Let’s hope one of these teams come through and do the right thing.