Eric Bieniemy Becomes Face of the NFL's Quarterback Coaching Summit

During a two-day NFL quarterback coaching summit taking place Monday and Tuesday of this week, Black NFL coaches may be getting another chance to prove they're worthy of a next-level job. Kansas City Chiefs Offensive Coordinator Eric Bieniemy continues to be at the forefront of the NFL's diversity problem.

Sports Illustrated's Albert Breer wrote about the goals of the coaching summit:

On Monday and Tuesday, some 80 coaches will convene with NFL folks for the third annual summit, done this year, for obvious reasons, virtually. And given the times, Vincent and others from the league will arrive with a little extra purpose.

They’ll be there to help develop promising young coaches, of course. But they’ll also be there to reveal some to NFL decision-makers, which signifies a real step forward for 2020.

The hope being, of course, that the impact will be felt during the next hiring cycle in January.

As one of just two Black NFL offensive coordinators and a considered-but-not-hired head coaching candidate for the last two offseasons, Bieniemy has become the face of the NFL's recent changes to the Rooney Rule and beyond. When talking with reporters on May 18, after the Rooney Rule amendments, Bieniemy said he didn't expect much to change.

“My overall reaction is it’s going to remain the same,” Bieniemy said. “I am blessed and fortunate to be placed in this opportunity and be given this situation. One thing as a coach, you always want to be judged based off your own merit. At the end of the day, the best coach is going to be hired. That’s what I do. I coach football. When it’s all said and done with, I can’t control all the controllers. The only thing I can control is where we are at right now and what we’re doing.”

In his article, Breer cites his conversation with the NFL's EVP of football operations, Troy Vincent, and reflects on Bieniemy's head coaching interviews and the problem in the league that it reflects.

Vincent, at the end of our call on Thursday morning, went through all the names that interviewed for each of the NFL’s five head-coaching openings back in January—with the point being that there was only one black offensive coordinator, Eric Bienemy, who even had a shot at any of the five jobs (he was in the running for three of them).

And that really drove home the point here, which is that the summit isn’t just about addressing the league’s shortage of black head coaches (there will be just two in 2020). It’s also about attacking a similar lack of numbers in what’s become the best runway for young assistants to become head coaches.

The biggest reason Bienemy was the only black OC to interview for a head coaching job is, in fact, remarkably simple and obvious. There are only two of them in the NFL, with Tampa Bay’s Byron Leftwich being the other. Likewise, Indianapolis’s Marcus Brady and the Chargers’ Pep Hamilton are the league’s only black quarterbacks coaches.

That’s a point of frustration for a lot of people. And it’s not hard to hear it in Vincent’s voice.

“We’re just better than that,” he said. That’s all. We’re just better than that.”

To read Breer's full story, click here.