Everyone has known about tanking. Shit, the 2011 Colts went with Curtis Painter at QB and they had plenty of time to get a better player. "Tanking for Tua" and "suck for Luck" were widely known things. this is why the NBA has a draft lottery.
I find it interesting that the tanking allegations from Flores that are being spoken about mostly. They represent supporting reasons for his law suit regarding racist hiring practices. They are not the lead story at all. Mr. Flores led the Dolphins to back to back winning seasons for the first time in 20 years. His first season, he won 5 games with a roster that was constructed to lose. He deserved an extension and a raise not dismissal.
He was then overlooked by the first 4 teams with openings. None of them hired him although he is clearly the best candidate available. He was asked to interview when the outcome of the process was already known. Two of the teams hired other former Patriot assistants like he is. One of them has no HC experience, the other has a career record of 11-17 and his team got demonstrably worse in his tenure. Both are white. the Bears hire a random white coordinator with no NFL HC experience. The Broncos did similar. Flores just turned around a dismal franchise. He did it with a QB that the GM and owner wanted but he didn't. Imagine if the Dolphins had drafted Herbert as Flores wanted. One would think that if you were the Bears you would just offer him the job and get out of the way. The man has actually just done the thing that you want your coach to do, that is turn around a bad franchise with a young QB. The same is true in Houston, Denver, New York etc.
The most damning evidence is also the easiest to find. There is presently 1 black HC in the NFL, Mike Tomlin. Tomlin is an excellent coach. He is a super bowl champion. His team is always competitive. No one else is hiring black coaches. I wonder why? Black NFL coaches get fired 1 year earlier than their white counterparts on average. They are far less likely to be rehired as well. Consider this nugget from a Five-Thirty-Eight article on the subject written 2 years ago: "According to data from
Arizona State’s Global Sport Education and Research Lab, 29.5 percent of newly hired white head coaches between the 2009 and 2018 seasons had been the head coach of another team, while just 8.3 percent of coaches of color fit the same description." If Tomlin left Pittsburgh, would someone hire him? Of course they would, right? I am not sure that he would.
Consider that Jim Caldwell went 9-7 his last 2 years in Detroit. Since 200 the Lions have had a winning record 5 times. Three of those times Caldwell was the coach. Since his firing they have won 17 games in 4 years with 3 white HC's. Caldwell won 18 games in his first 2 years alone. One would think that a coach that had a winning record for the preposterously poorly run lions would get a job right? He is unemployed. Caldwell made a superbowl with he Colts. Holds the record for best record by a rookie HC. He was fired in Indy after they intentionally sucked for luck, just as Hugh Jackson (a black coach) was fire after 1 year when the Browns tanked. Caldwell has a 64-54 career record in the NFL including the 2011 2-14 season when the Colts management was obviously tanking.
There have been analysis of black coaches vs. white coaches and how their teams did vs. their teams expected outcomes. Black HC's generally do better than their white counterparts. It's a hard argument to make though because less than 25 head coaching vacancies have been filled with black coaches after going through full interview processes. In these sorts of assessments, N matters a whole lot. N<25 is not terribly accurate. And that is the problem. The N is kept low by the NFL owners.
Tanking has been known about for a long time. It seems like it's become the lead story now that someone sued the league over blatant racist hiring practices. Seems like buying the lead to me. We have not paid attention to it for all this time until a brave guy stands up and shows us all something far less comfortable to be angry about. If we are going to be upset about tanking maybe we should at least acknowledge that management and ownership tend to feel comfortable blaming black coaches when they do it (Flores, Jackson, Caldwell) and firing them after so that their white successor can reap the benefits including the guy who thought that this play would work:
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