Another NFL head-coaching cycle sadly ends without Eric Bieniemy landing a job

With the Arizona Cardinals announcing Tuesday the hiring of Jonathan Gannon as head coach, the 2023 NFL head-coach hiring cycle ended.

Last we saw Gannon, he was the Philadelphia Eagles' defensive coordinator, and his unit gave up 17 fourth-quarter points in a 38-35 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl. The Eagles barely got a hand on, let alone sacked, Patrick Mahomes, who played with one good ankle.

Yet the man who has been credited over and over as being a significant part of the Chiefs' offensive success, the one who found and exploited — twice — a flaw in the Eagles' defense, is essentially jobless at the moment.

It's clear at this point that Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy will never be an NFL head coach. But that shouldn't stop anyone from repeatedly pointing out how absurd it is that he isn't, especially when a man he just went toe-to-toe with and beat got a head job.

Look, some of you might be tired of reading stories and columns like this, and in a lot of ways, there's fatigue for all parties involved. But for all of the interview mandates, draft pick rewards and accelerator programs, nothing has changed. It's frustrating and sometimes enraging to watch year after year as good, smart leaders who have devoted their professional lives to climbing up the NFL ladder get passed over or flat-out ignored.

Unless and until something changes, you're going to keep seeing headlines about it.

Back to Bieniemy: According to backup quarterback Chad Henne, the night before Super Bowl LVII, the coach met with offensive players and showed them a play from Philadelphia's October game against Jacksonville. It showed a Jaguars receiver faking as if he were going in motion, only to stop, reverse course and find himself open for a touchdown.

The Chiefs did something similar against the Eagles on Sunday. Twice. In the fourth quarter. And got touchdowns on both.

Gannon didn't make an adjustment after the first time his group was beaten. But sure, he sounds like a perfect guy to hand the keys to an entire team.

In five years in charge of Kansas City's offense, Bieniemy has earned two Super Bowl rings and three AFC championship titles and played an integral role in the development of the best quarterback in the league. But it's evident that the NFL ownership class and hiring executives will come up with any and every reason they can to not give him a chance to be a head coach.

Would he be any good? Who knows? The point is he has never gotten a chance, the same chance guys such as Nathaniel Hackett, Joe Judge, Freddie Kitchens, Kliff Kingsbury, Matt Rhule, Adam Gase (twice) and Josh McDaniels (three times!) got, most of them without a fraction of the résumé Bieniemy has. And for every one of those failures, there are first-time coaches who get an opportunity and enjoy success, like Bieniemy's boss Andy Reid got with the Eagles in 1999 or Mike Tomlin with the Steelers in 2007.

What's more, Bieniemy's contract with Kansas City is up, and while his name has been attached to some coordinator openings, he hasn't yet been hired elsewhere. There's a theory that if he goes to a different team and calls plays and has success away from Reid, it will lead to him finally being hired as a head coach, but neither Doug Pederson nor Matt Nagy, both of whom preceded Bieniemy as Chiefs offensive coordinator and neither of whom called plays, had to leave Reid's staff to be hired as head coaches.

Bieniemy, who has been interviewed 17 times by 16 teams over the past few years, is another glaring, current example of the NFL's continued anti-Black bias when it comes to hiring head coaches. He is this generation's Sherman Lewis, an offensive coach whose qualifications were blindingly evident but who was never hired to run a team.

Bieniemy, like Lewis before him, is far from the only one.

Five teams had head-coach openings this offseason, and not a single one requested Buffalo Bills defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier, whose group has been first or second in defensive points allowed in three of the past four seasons.

Breathing the same air as Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay has led to five of his assistants, all white, getting head-coaching jobs, but defensive coordinator Raheem Morris, whose unit allowed fewer than 20 points per game in the 2021 postseason, has gotten interviews and nothing more.

Steve Wilks had the mess Rhule made of the Panthers dumped in his lap six games into the season and watched the team trade away its best offensive player and still turned Carolina into a respectable team for the final 12 weeks. He was passed over in favor of a man who'd been fired just weeks earlier, Frank Reich.

When it comes to Black head coaches, the goalposts move so much they're basically windmills.

Not counting Bieniemy, there are just 12 Black coordinators in the league, all of them on defense. There are some openings still to be filled, but save for Eagles quarterbacks coach Brian Johnson, who is likely to be promoted to offensive coordinator in the wake of Shane Steichen being hired by the Colts and Bieniemy being hired elsewhere, the number of Black offensive coordinators will remain dismal.

And given that since 2016, 42 of the 56 head-coaching hires came from offensive jobs, there isn't much hope that the number of Black head coaches will increase in the near future.

We've heard every excuse, every reason that year after year, the number of Black head coaches has remained stagnant, as a group and as individual candidates. And every year, we've seen white coaches who don't meet the alleged qualifications or requisite experience hired.

Some succeed, some fail, but they still get chances, unlike Bieniemy.