The NFL is down to one Black head coach. Paging KC Chiefs coordinator Eric Bieniemy...
Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy plugged into a virtual news conference Thursday to talk about the Pittsburgh Steelers. Except, try as he might, he couldn’t have possibly expected that he would be talking much about the Pittsburgh Steelers.
It’s mid-January, after all; eight NFL teams (one-fourth of the league) need a head coach; and Bieniemy figures to be in the mix for some of them.
Again.
And so, naturally, the conversation shifted pretty quickly. Bieniemy played along, at least at first, with a line he uses often this time of year: It’s good just to be mentioned.
But that’s not been enough. So nearly 10 minutes later, as the questions about the conceivability of him running an NFL staff continued, he felt obligated to point something out.
“Don’t you guys know we play the Pittsburgh Steelers this weekend?” he asked. “What we talking about, fellas? Are we talking about football, or are we talking about interviews?”
There was a twinge of intentional amusement in that reply. But it’s important to note this conversation is not taking place because of the media. It’s not taking place because of Eric Bieniemy, either.
It’s here because the NFL has collectively continued to make it one. The NFL is down to one Black head coach as of Thursday afternoon, and it’s the guy coming to Kansas City for a playoff game this weekend. As the league continues to promote diversity and inclusion with public marketing campaigns — and even minority-hiring incentives — its franchises have moved in the opposite direction for leadership of their locker rooms.
The Texans fired David Culley, a former Chiefs assistant, on Thursday after just one year on the job — the only one-year coach in Houston history — after they’d asked him to win football games with Davis Mills, not Deshaun Watson, as his quarterback. This comes days after the Dolphins fired Brian Flores in a move that shocked even those in connected NFL circles. It will be said there were more to those situations — there always is more — but for the moment it leaves an alarming statistic.
One Black head coach. In a league that employs 70% Black players.
Steelers coach Mike Tomlin will arrive in Kansas City on Sunday for his 10th playoff appearance in 15 seasons in Pittsburgh, a remarkable run that includes zero losing seasons. His resume stands out, and now it stands all by its lonesome.
The conversation can conclude when that’s no longer accurate. Same for the annual song-and-dance with Bieniemy. He did not ask to be the poster child for this storyline, but here he sits nonetheless. The first half of that sentence is comprised of his own words from last year, and the second half is reality.
He is the offensive coordinator for a team that has reached two straight Super Bowls; he’s been coaching football for two decades now; and he’s received public support, sometimes even unprompted, from people like Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes.
Bieniemy has interviewed with nearly half of the league’s teams over the past three years, and he’ll have another interview with the Denver Broncos next week to discuss their coaching vacancy.
That’s 14 of 32 teams that have invited Bieniemy to present his blueprint for the future. And you can’t help but wonder if that is now part of what works against him, if one team determines, Yeah, we like him, but what are we missing? What didn’t everyone else see?
Bieniemy does not decide the play-calls in Kansas City, at least not regularly, a role that Reid preserves for himself. But he’s been passed over for others who didn’t call plays either ... and others who not had not even coached a down of NFL football.
All of this, Bieniemy insists, is far from his mind as the Chiefs prepare to play the Steelers in the AFC Wild Card Round on Sunday. He cannot interview for other jobs until that round is completed. So the Steelers garner all of his focus.
But he’s thought about being a head coach for awhile — long before he arrived in Kansas City. In fact, back in 2006 when he was a position coach for the Vikings, his first NFL coaching job, Bieniemy observed another man prepare to make that step. That man was eventually hired, and he’s done quite well.
Mike Tomlin.
“I watched him go through his interview process, and it was very, very impressive,” Bieniemy said. “I always knew after watching him have that experience and watching him become the great coach that he has become (that) it’s been very motivating to me. I’ve been collecting my items for my book for a number of years now. You just keep adding on to it and keep building it.”
That was back in 2006. Bieniemy was just 37, the possibilities in front of him. Now, he’s a Super Bowl champion and a nine-year member of an Andy Reid-led staff, the past four as the offensive coordinator.
Maybe this is the year a team takes a chance on him.
Or maybe we have this conversation again next year.
“Right now, my whole point is to make sure that’s not a distraction in anything we want to accomplish,” Bieniemy said. “Because the only thing that matters is our guys are mentally and physically prepared to go out and play the best that they can play on Sunday. And the rest of the other stuff will take of it itself.”
This story was originally published January 14, 2022 at 5:00 AM.