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With a record nine minority head coaches in place for the 2024 season, the NFL achieves a “significant milestone.”

For years, the National Football League has pushed teams to choose more head coaches who are minorities.

It appears like the mission is finally paying off.

As a result of the four minority head coach hires this season (Raheem Morris of Atlanta, Jerod Mayo of New England, Antonio Pierce of Las Vegas, and Dave Canales of Carolina), there will be nine coaches of color in the league as of the 2024 season, the highest number ever. The positions in Seattle and Washington are still unfilled.

It’s a “huge milestone” for the NFL, according to Richard Lapchick, founder of The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport.

Lapchick told The Associated Press, “The league has been struggling to boost the percentage of head coaches of color, particularly black head coaches.” “The NFL has put in a lot of effort to implement these programs, and the advantages are finally being realized.”

The Rooney Rule was first implemented by the NFL in 2003 with the goal of increasing the number of minority head coaches (and eventually general managers and executives). The rule requires teams to interview at least one person of color prior to making a hiring decision.

In 2020, the league went one step further and added to the regulation, offering teams compensatory draft picks in the event that a minority coach or top football executive left for another team as a means of encouraging them to recruit minority assistant coaches. According to NFL regulations, if two minority employees are hired by another club, teams will earn third-round selections in each of the following two drafts, or in each of the following three drafts, if the applicants remained on the team for at least two years.

Consequently, the Buccaneers will not receive any third-round picks because Canales only spent one season with the team; in contrast, the Rams would earn two for losing Morris to the Falcons.

Ron Rivera, a Latino who was the head coach in Carolina and Washington before moving to Washington, expressed his satisfaction with the current state of the league. “I believe it’s a sign that something needs to change when you have to provide incentives to hire people of color. However, this is truly about providing opportunity for minorities, in my opinion, and I believe that expanding your candidate pool to include more people makes it easier to identify the greatest candidate, whoever they may be.”

Before accepting his first position as head coach at Carolina in 2011, Rivera conducted eight interviews with different teams. He claimed that it was annoying at times to feel like a “token” minority candidate.

He eventually felt that teams were genuinely interested in employing him and that, with time, he improved in interviews.

“It was a fairly wonderful sensation when I eventually understood there was true interest,” Rivera remarked.

To attain equality, more work needs to be done.

As per the Lapchick’s Institute 2023 Racial and Gender Report Card, 66.7% of the league’s players are minorities, with 53.5% of them being black. The percentage of black and minority head coaches is not represented in those figures.

However, things are moving forward.

Morris, Mayo, Pierce, Todd Bowles of Tampa Bay, Mike Tomlin of Pittsburgh, and DeMeco Ryans of Houston are the six black head coaches going into 2024, which is double the number from 2023. Canales, a Mexican American, Miami’s biracial Mike McDaniel, and Lebanese-born Robert Saleh of the New York Jets are the other minority coaches.

According to Rivera, the hiring decisions this year were “definitely” influenced by the 2023 season’s performance of minority head coaches. Tomlin, McDaniel, Ryans, Bowles, and Tomlin all guided their clubs to the postseason.

When asked whether it is good to hear about the hiring of additional minority head coaches, like his former quarterbacks coach Canales, Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith—who is black—answered the question. He gave a firm no in response.

Smith stated, “We are talking about minorities in 2024.” That’s hardly encouraging, then. I believe that we need to stop talking about that and just allow individuals to be themselves. However, that’s a whole different subject.”