Hurting your chances by interviewing too much
Dungy got his first interview for a head-coaching job with the Philadelphia Eagles in 1986. He was just 30 years old. "I didn't know what I was doing," he said.
Over the next few years, he was frequently mentioned as one of the premier head-coaching candidates in the NFL — a safe bet to become one of the first Black coaches to get a top job. But in nine years, he only received three more interviews, two of which left him convinced he never had a realistic shot in the first place.
In 1988, at the end of his interview with Green Bay Packers executive Tom Braatz, Dungy said he asked Braatz to describe his ideal candidate for the team's head-coaching vacancy. Braatz told him it would be an offensive-minded coach who had previous head-coaching experience. Dungy was neither.
Then, in 1994, Dungy said he wrapped up an interview with new Jacksonville Jaguars owner Wayne Weaver by asking the same question. This time, Dungy was told the Jaguars wanted a head coach who could also be the general manager. He had no interest or experience in holding both roles.
"You're a little frustrated. You think, 'Gosh, I didn’t really have a chance at this,'" Dungy said. "Can you really blow the owner away and get the job, or is it just a quick perfunctory thing so I can say I filled out the requirement of the rule?"
Dungy said his fourth interview of that stretch, which was again with the Eagles, illustrates the complexity of that question. When owner Jeffrey Lurie described his ideal candidate, Dungy thought he sounded like a perfect fit. He said he called his wife, convinced he would ultimately get the job. Instead, Lurie diverged from his plan and hired Ray Rhodes, who is also Black.
"I don’t think Ray Rhodes was necessarily what Jeff Lurie was looking for," Dungy said. "Ray kind of blew Jeff away."
Arizona State athletic director Ray Anderson, who was Dungy's agent at the time, said he doesn't remember the specifics of those early interviews. But he knows there were plenty of teams at the time who interviewed Black coaches just to check a box — "(more) than will ever be known publicly," he said.
As an agent representing Black coaches, Anderson said he often cautioned his clients to be strategic about which — and how many — interview offers to accept, even for head-coaching roles. Pass on a legitimate opportunity and it might mean losing out on a dream job, but take too many illegitimate ones and it could hurt you.
"If you’re not hired, then you run the risk of one of the 32 owners saying, 'I don’t want to hire a coach who, very frankly, was rejected by three or four other teams already,' " said Anderson, who later served on the working committee that helped develop the Rooney Rule during his time as an executive with the Atlanta Falcons.
"That’s the real dilemma, when you have so few opportunities."
No blueprint for hiring a head coach
For Dungy, this issue gets at the heart of the Rooney Rule — and the late Dan Rooney's intentions when helping to craft it.
The assumption was that NFL owners, like Rooney, would have a blueprint or set of qualifications they were looking for in a head coach when embarking on a search. If a rule required them to interview a coach of color, the idea went, they would naturally interview a coach who fit that blueprint — and maybe it would lead to them getting hired.
In reality, Dungy said, many owners have no idea what sort of tangible characteristics they want in a head coach.
Others have a clear blueprint, then turn around and interview coaches who don't fit it.
The Hall of Fame coach mentioned a conversation he had with one executive during the 2021 hiring cycle, who said his team's owner was set on hiring a young coach with offensive expertise who could help develop their quarterback. Dungy later saw the team interviewed Bowles, a veteran coach who specializes in defense.
N. Jeremi Duru, the author of "Advancing the Ball: Race, Reformation, and the Quest for Equal Coaching Opportunity in the NFL," said the small pool of frequently-interviewed minority coaches reflects a broader theme — that owners want to feel comfortable around the men they interview and hire.
"Generally speaking (among) club owners — an almost racially homogenous group — there tends to be less comfort with candidates of color. And among candidates of color, I think there’s often less comfort with new candidates," said Duru, a law professor at American University.
"I think there may be comfort around some candidates and, as a consequence, they get recycled for multiple interviews. Other candidates have a harder time getting them."
Graves said he generally views an uptick in minority interviews, even among a small group, as a step in the right direction because it means they are getting more exposure.
But he acknowledged it can become problematic in cases like Bieniemy's, where a coach is interviewed over and over again without getting a job — raising questions about preparedness, or creating a stigma that the coach doesn't interview well.
"How many white candidates have been in the same position, where we’ve seen them take six, seven interviews or more and never have gotten a job?" Graves asked. "And are they treated differently, in terms of their perception about their preparedness and ability to coach at a higher level?"
Trying to eliminate so-called sham interviews
In a wide-ranging conversation with USA TODAY Sports in September, NFL officials pointed to a number of policies they have implemented in recent years in an effort to bolster hiring practices in the league.
In addition to expanding the Rooney Rule, the league now requires inclusive hiring training for team personnel who are involved in the interview and hiring processes. It's created networking events and an "accelerator" program to help non-white coaches get face time with team owners. And every year, its football operations team compiles a "ready list," with data and information on top minority coaching candidates.
NFL executive vice president and chief administrative officer Dasha Smith also said the league carefully monitors the head coach interview process, doing what it can to identify and eliminate so-called sham interviews. She acknowledged, however, it is often "very difficult to know" which ones are illegitimate.
"We try to put everything in place so we can look at some objective metrics to try to ensure that it’s not perfunctory, if you will," Smith said in September. "So that is: Who’s in the room? How long are the interviews? Are they in-person, are they (via) Zoom? ... And then we also reach out to the candidates who’ve been part of the process and ask them how they felt about the interview."
Flores alleged in the lawsuit that the New York Giants had already decided to hire Brian Daboll when they interviewed him for their head-coaching vacancy last year. The Giants denied the claim, saying Flores "was in the conversation to be our head coach until the eleventh hour" but they felt Daboll was the better fit.
Flores has interviewed for at least nine jobs over three hiring cycles, according to USA TODAY Sports research, and he's been hired once — as head coach of the Miami Dolphins in 2019. The team fired him after 2021, and he spent this season with the Steelers. It is unclear if he will receive consideration for open head-coaching jobs during the current hiring cycle.
Dungy said his hope, this year and beyond, is not just that well-known coaches like Flores will get more legitimate interviews and head-coaching opportunities. It's also that young Black assistants, who have never interviewed for a head job, will be included in the candidate pool and given a chance to wow owners.
As a comparison, Dungy mentioned Zac Taylor, a white coach who was a relative unknown before the Cincinnati Bengals hired him in 2019.
"There’s some Black Zac Taylors out there, but they’re not going to get those opportunities — or they haven’t," he said.
"How do you get the young, up-and-coming, unknown Black assistants interviews? That to me is where we can make progress."
Contributing: Jim Sergent
