Here we go again…
Last week, former ESPN personality Jemele Hill expressed her disappointment with the Atlanta Falcons for hiring a white head coach. And this week it’s another former ESPN host, Skip Bayless, who’s upset that yet another team, the Cleveland Browns, didn’t hire a black head coach.
The grievances from both Hill and Bayless center around Shedeur Sanders, the rookie quarterback for the Browns.
The son of Deion Sanders and one of the most high-profile rookies in the NFL that we’ve seen in a while, Sanders started the season as the third-string quarterback for the Browns. Thanks to some questionable roster moves (like trading Joe Flacco to their rivals, the Cincinnati Bengals) and an injury to Shedeur’s fellow rookie Dillon Gabriel, Sanders ended up as the Browns starter for their final seven games of the season.
The Browns went 3-4 in those games with Sanders as the starter, and he ended the season with more interceptions than touchdowns, but there were still flashes that gave Browns fans hope that he may be able to grow into becoming a solid NFL quarterback.
After the season, the Browns fired head coach Kevin Stefanski, a a two-time NFL Coach of the Year who managed to lead the Browns to the playoffs in two of his first four seasons. But Stefanski wasn’t unemployed for long, because the Atlanta Falcons announced last week that he would be taking over as their new head coach.
According to Jemele Hill though, Falcons fans aren’t happy with the (white) coach being hired…because Shedeur Sanders wasn’t the starter earlier in the season?
“None of the Falcons fans I know like the Stefanski hire. He had a losing record in Cleveland and they didn’t like how he handled the Shedeur Sanders situation. They LOVE Deion in the ATL. It’s a Black city, with one of the Blackest fan bases in the NFL, and they have a Black QB on their roster — so a lot of ATL fans are side-eyeing this hire. Stefanski isn’t going to get a honeymoon there.”
https://twitter.com/jemelehill/status/2014714550088826901
Yeah, I dunno either.
But anyway, that brings us to Skip Bayless. After a coaching search that led to pretty much every good candidate turning them down, the Browns were reportedly down to their defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz, Baltimore Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken, and Los Angeles Rams pass game coordinator Nate Scheelhaase.
The job ultimately went to Monken, who the Browns apparently saw as their best bet among an underwhelming group of candidates who were interested in the job.
Bayless, though, is outraged that the Browns passed over Scheelhaase (who is black) to hire Monken (who is white) to coach Shedeur Sanders.
I mean, forget that Monken has significantly more experience in the NFL, or in coaching in general. Bayless wanted the Browns to give Sanders a black coach:
“I’m not saying Todd Monken was a bad hire for the Cleveland Browns or for Shedeur Sanders. I’m just saying that for me, he’s a disappointing hire because I had gotten my heart set on a young coach you may not have heard about, heard of until very lately, Nate Scheelhaase…
Nate Scheelhaase is the only young black offensive coach I know in the head coaching pipeline in the National Football League. It’s the only one I know, which horrifies me.”
Bayless goes on to say that he’s “horrified” at how few black head coaches there are in the NFL, while also admitting that hiring Scheelhaase would have been a risk – even admitting that he doesn’t know whether Scheelhaase would have even been a believer in Shedeur Sanders. But Bayless himself clearly believes that Sanders is a future NFL superstar:
“All I know is he can play quarterback, and he was born to play quarterback. And he’s got a lot of his father’s intangibles in him. The bigger the moment, the better he is. He made some sensational throws for the Cleveland Browns this year…
Does Todd Monken believe in Shedeur Sanders as the future? Man, I have no idea, and I’m not saying this would be a disaster for Shedeur, but Todd Monken obviously is an older white coach.”
I mean, does he think the Browns didn’t have that conversation with Monken during his interview? (Then again, this IS the Browns we’re talking about). But surely they wouldn’t have brought in a coach who wasn’t willing to develop their starting quarterback.
And honestly, Bayless may have an argument with his larger point of there being so few black head coaches in the NFL. The Rooney Rule, requiring teams to interview black candidates for open jobs, was supposed to solve this, but instead seems to now be just a procedural hurdle teams dispense with to get to their desired candidate.
But admitting that you wish they would have hired somebody based on race? That’s quite the take too.
