Does the NFL have a special teams bias when hiring head coaches? History indicates it does

Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh can’t quite explain one of the most peculiar hiring patterns in NFL history.

Why don’t NFL teams hire special teams coordinators to be head coaches?

The New Orleans Saints recently promoted their special teams coordinator, Darren Rizzi, to run the team as head coach on an interim basis. But only twice in league history have special teams coordinators been hired as non-interim head coaches, indicating another potential blind spot or bias in the hiring process among NFL teams.

NFL team owners instead typically hire head coaches who look a certain way (white) and fit a certain mold (dynamic play-caller), according to USA TODAY Sports data, even though such traits don’t predict future success as head coaches.

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“I thought it would change,” Harbaugh told USA TODAY Sports in May. “I thought if I was able to be successful, that it would open the door for those guys, and I think a lot of those guys felt that way as well. It hasn’t been the case. Nobody’s been hired who was mainly a special teams coordinator in their career. I’ve got to be honest: That’s been a disappointment.”

Harbaugh isn't even among the two special teams coaches in NFL history who got directly promoted to head coach. He spent nine seasons as a special teams coach in Philadelphia before he switched to defensive backs coach in 2007, then got hired by the Ravens as head coach in 2008. Likewise, several other successful NFL head coaches worked with special teams early in their NFL careers but seemingly had to prove they could coach another part of the team before getting a head coaching job — including Bill Belichick, Marv Levy, Dick Vermeil and Bill Cowher.

Despite their track records, the pattern continues, suggesting biases come in different forms, not just with race, when hiring head coaches.

'Look at who’s doing the hiring’

Data compiled by USA TODAY Sports for its NFL coaches project shows just how rare it is for special teams coordinators to even be considered for head-coaching vacancies. Of the 80 NFL assistant coaches who have held the title of special teams coordinator since 2010, only 12 have gotten an interview to be a non-interim head coach — and only one was promoted directly to head coach, according to the data, which analyzed interviews reported publicly and announced by teams.

The bias also appears to be about the role, not race. About 75% of special teams coordinators since 2010 have been white.

To gain better perspective about this and how perceptions influence head coaching hires, USA TODAY Sports discussed the trend with former NFL special teams coaches and reviewed the data and history. NFL executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent was not made available for an interview.

Theories abound about why special teams coordinators aren't considered for head-coaching positions: There are misconceptions about the job. It's not the standard career path. And these coaches aren't as well-known as offensive or defensive coordinators.

But special teams coaches work with players from both sides of the ball and oversee a critical part of the game, with new rules for kickoffs and big plays in the kicking game impacting teams every week.

“You have to look at who’s doing the hiring and their comfort level with doing something that hasn’t necessarily been done before and does not have a lot of data behind it outside of Coach Harbaugh,” said Maurice Drayton, a former NFL special teams coach who is now the head coach at The Citadel, the military college in South Carolina.

Only 2 direct hires from special teams in NFL history

All together since 2010, there have been 448 potential opportunities for special teams coordinators to be hired as head coaches — 32 special teams coordinators per season over 14 hiring cycles. Yet only one got a direct promotion from special teams coach to head coach – Joe Judge in 2020. The New York Giants hired him after he previously served as special teams coordinator of the New England Patriots.

Why would the number be so low?

“I don’t know,” Harbaugh said during an interview about his family’s Harbaugh Coaching Academy. “Maybe winning the press conference has something to do with it.”

“Winning the press conference” means generating excitement among fans when introducing a new head coach at a news conference. That often happens when a team hires a hotshot offensive coordinator, whose prior success with scoring points helps create hype.

By contrast, special teams coordinators are not as well known by fans and news media as the coaches running the offense and defense. They're often not in the spotlight unless something goes wrong.

"When we do it well, people don’t always notice, but when it goes bad, the only time I show up on TV is when something goes awry," former college special teams coach Brian Polian said in 2022.

Before Judge, only one other special teams coach in the NFL was directly promoted to head coach on a non-interim basis — Frank Gansz of the Kansas City Chiefs, who was promoted to head coach in 1987.

Gansz gave a similar answer before he died in 2009.

“Offensive coordinators sell tickets,” Gansz said in a story written by USA TODAY's Brent Schrotenboer for American Football Monthly in 2001.  “Special teams coordinators don’t.”

So where do head coaches come from? From 2010-2024, USA TODAY Sports data shows 90 head coach hires. Of those, 34 were promoted from offensive coordinator (38%); 23 from defensive coordinator (26%); 14 were NFL head coaches switching teams (16%); nine were NCAA head coaches (10%); six offensive position coaches (7%); two defensive position coaches (2%); one special teams coordinator (1%); and one Canadian Football League head coach (1%).

Small sample size of results

As the only special teams coordinators promoted directly to head coach, Judge and Gansz didn’t help their cause by only lasting two seasons in the top job. Both got fired – Judge with a 10-23 record with the Giants; Gansz with an 8-22-1 record with the Chiefs.

Again, the list doesn’t include Harbaugh, the NFL's second-longest tenured head coach. He switched away from special teams coaching in 2007 to improve his chances of getting a head coaching job, according to his then-head coach, Andy Reid, in Philadelphia.

He then was hired as head coach a year later by Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti.

“Steve told me when he hired me that he doesn’t look at resumé,” Harbaugh said. “He’s not hiring a resumé. He’s looking for leaders.”

The list also doesn’t include special teams coordinators who became interim head coaches, such as Rizzi of the Saints or Rich Bisaccia of the Las Vegas Raiders in 2021. Bisaccia was deemed good enough to pinch-hit as head coach and led the Raiders to a 7-6 record and their first playoff berth since 2016. But he still didn’t win the job permanently. The Raiders instead hired an offensive coordinator, Josh McDaniels, who failed in his previous head coaching job at Denver and then got fired again from the Raiders in 2023.

The Peter Principle of NFL hiring practices?

Recent NFL history is littered with failed and fired head coaches like McDaniels. They got hired largely because of their histories or reputations as offensive gurus – Kliff Kingsbury, Frank Reich, Todd Haley, Adam Gase, Nathaniel Hackett, Mike McCoy, Chip Kelly, et al.

Some of them even got second chances as head coaches despite their prior failings: McDaniels, Gase, Reich, Kelly.

This shows that being good at dialing up plays or tutoring quarterbacks as an offensive coordinator doesn’t always predict success as a head coach. That’s at least partly because a head-coaching job requires a different set of skills than those required of offensive or defensive coordinators, such as managing a larger organization on and off the field, not just game-planning one side of the ball.

"In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence,” the late educator and author Laurence Peter once wrote.

This applies to the NFL. It’s called the Peter Principle. This principle describes how employees often are promoted to a new job because they were good at a previous job, even though the new job requires a different set of skills and abilities. These promoted employees then “rise to the level of their own incompetence” because the traits that made them successful in their old jobs might not even be relevant enough in their new jobs to make them competent.

Why would special teams coaches be any different?

The skills that make them good as special teams coordinators also seem to translate well into a head-coaching position. The players they coach come from both sides of the ball and include punters and placekickers.

“You deal with guys on offense and defense as well as your specialists,” said Drayton, who coached NFL special teams in Las Vegas, Green Bay and Indianapolis. “When I was in Green Bay, I coached everybody with the exception of (quarterback) Aaron Rodgers, and let’s face it: He coaches us sometimes. But even with him, we would go through situational awareness, game situations. I had the opportunity to coach him, so you deal with the total roster.”

It's also a high-stakes job in charge of several units. A single play on special teams can make or break games: field goals, blocked punts, kickoff coverage, etc.

Situational awareness, game management and adaptability are important, too. Consider the recent rules changes on kickoffs.

“We watch every (kickoff) play of every game, every week,” Arizona Cardinals special teams coordinator Jeff Rodgers told reporters about the changes in September. “In the past, we wouldn’t necessarily be studying every scheme. Like maybe you’re evaluating, 'Was it an onside kick, or was it a longer return?'

"Every week we’ve done this, we learned something new and, hopefully, it helps us along the way.”

It still boils down to perception

Unfair prejudices can come in many forms, whether it’s about race, age, background or role. In this case, the data indicates team owners have narrowed their vision of who can be head coaches.

Consider how special teams coaches seem to need to prove they can coach something else before they can get a chance as head coach.

In Harbaugh’s case, Eagles head coach Andy Reid moved him to defensive backs coach in 2007 after nine years as special teams coordinator. Reid said then that the job of special teams coordinator is "probably closer to a head coaching position than what people perceive."

Even so, Reid said moving Harbaugh to a new position would help him more than staying there.

"His goal is to be a head coach and this gives him an opportunity to get closer to that," Reid told reporters at the time.

In 1969, Los Angeles Rams coach George Allen hired Dick Vermeil to be the first designated special teams coordinator in NFL history. A year later, Vermeil was replaced by Mary Levy. Both Vermeil and Levy are now in the Pro Football Hall of Fame as head coaches, but neither got their first NFL head coaching jobs until after they proved they could coach something else.

In Vermeil’s case, he didn’t get hired as head coach until after he served as a quarterbacks coach in the NFL and head coach at UCLA. In Levy’s case, he went from special teams coach of the Washington football team to head coach of the Montreal Alouettes in the Canadian Football League before he got hired as an NFL head coach.

Ignorance about the job of a special teams coach might be part of the issue, too.

“It’s a lot of coaching and a lot of skill and a lot of scheme that goes into it,” Drayton said. “I think the lack of knowledge of what special teams coordinators do has hindered that as well.”

Among NFL owners?

“Yes, among owners” Drayton said. “Yes, yes.”

Contributing: Tom Schad

Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: [email protected]

(This story was updated to change a photo.)