KC Chiefs’ Eric Bieniemy has now struck a different tone in his quest for an NFL job
Eric Bieniemy is standing at a wooden lectern for the first time since January, and although it takes a few minutes on this particular occasion, the familiar topic eventually arrives.
His candidacy to be an NFL head coach.
Bieniemy, the fifth-year Chiefs offensive coordinator, has become the face of the NFL’s most glaring race problem — its lack of diversity in leadership positions — a role he never has really fully embraced, nor appeared particularly comfortable in occupying.
Really, though, who would sign up for this?
Here we go, yet another year. He cannot avoid a storyline that has persisted so long that he’s participated in two separate New York Jets coaching cycles. So long that the man he replaced in his current job with the Chiefs, Matt Nagy, left to be a head coach for the Bears, made the postseason twice, missed it twice, got fired, returned to Kansas City and is now working under Bieniemy.
For years now, in interview after interview, Bieniemy has shrugged his shoulders at it all, providing mostly stock answers, insisting his concentration rests fully with his current team and not the potential of a new one.
That tone changed Thursday. Even if just a bit.
“I’m gonna keep knocking on that damn door,” he said, “and I’m going to keep working my ass off to make sure that it happens.”
A hint of frustration.
Finally.
We’ve yet to see much of it. In fact, in the back half of just an eight-minute news conference Thursday, Bieniemy did something he rarely does. He let us in. He let us feel what he’s apparently long felt as he has churned through 15 interviews without a job offer.
Some advice? This Eric Bieniemy should stick around. This Eric Bieniemy is a man who future teams should think twice about overlooking.
Many of Bieniemy’s in-season news conferences can be guarded, to say the least, whether he’s talking about an individual player, the offense as a whole or himself. He’s careful. He bypasses the opportunity to take control of the narrative. And it makes you wonder if his interviews unfold similarly.
On Thursday, he was candid instead.
At one point, I asked if the rejections — more than a dozen of them — have made it difficult to stay himself. If they’ve made it difficult to not feel as though he needs to make a massive change.
That reply, too, began with an admission he wouldn’t typically make.
“In reality, yes, it is tough,” he said. “But I don’t let that keep me from doing what I do. I’m still alive. I’m still breathing. And I have an opportunity to work with a championship team. So that’s the beauty of it.
“I don’t seek any comfort. I don’t want any pity. This is who I am. I’m gonna keep pushing, keep knocking, because when it’s all said and done with, I know who I am, and I am comfortable with the person I’m striving to be.”
Sure, he does. Can he be confident the right people know him well enough?
There are side conversations in which some catch a glimpse of it. He typically starts and finishes those with a handshake. He’s engaging. Calls you by name. By the conclusion, he will remind you that he appreciates you, even if you’ve started a conversation around an uncomfortable topic.
But those chats have an audience of just a few, sometimes even of just one, while critical comments from a former player like LeSean McCoy can reach the masses.
This might not be the problem.
But it’s not been the solution.
Bieniemy has the appearance of being confident in who he is, and showing the world more of that would be a good start. And it has started. As the NFL incentivized teams to hire minority head coaches, front office personnel and assistants, a week ago it held what it termed an accelerator program in Atlanta that brought together coaching and front office candidates for networking opportunities.
The biggest takeaway for Bieniemy? The chance to have more intimate, outside-the-facility conversations with owners and general managers.
“Everybody don’t know Eric Bieniemy,” he said. “I don’t know all those owners. I think the benefit of the league did was huge — it gave everyone a voice and a view to see, exactly from that window, what it’s like to interact with those people. To have that opportunity to say, hey, this is who I am.”
It’s embarrassing this needs to be done at all, but I guess we can credit the league for doing something, if for no other reason than to put the minority candidates in front of the right people, an opportunity they encounter too infrequently.
The Chiefs, and particularly Andy Reid, have dug into finding out why Bieniemy has not yet been hired. That process has provided few answers and plenty of angst. There is no shortage of theories inside NFL circles. He has not yet coached the quarterback position; there’s an arrest record from his playing days at Colorado; he doesn’t call the plays in Kansas City.
And he’s Black.
We cannot definitively say Bieniemy’s race is the crux of the reasons he’s still available, but the statistics definitively say his race does not help him get hired in this league.
We cannot definitively say some of his coach-speak in news conferences — which may or may not translate to the interview room — has hurt his chances to be hired, but the recent history definitively says it has not helped.
On Thursday, he struck a different chord, a more candid chord, in his first news conference of the year.
Hope it’s not the last time.
