Is mandating that all 32 teams hire a diverse offensive assistant the right move for the NFL? | You Pod to Win the Game – Yahoo Sports

Yahoo Sports Senior NFL Writer Charles Robinson and Yahoo Sports Columnist Shalise Manza Young discuss the NFLs decision to require each of their clubs to hire a female or a member of an ethnic or racial minority to serve as an offensive assistant. Hear the full conversation on the You Pod to Win the Game podcast. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you listen.

CHARLES ROBINSON: You see the league now starting to make strides, or trying to attempt, however you want-- if you want to say they're doing it for optics, you want to say they're actually doing it to try and change things-- however you want to absorb it, there's movement. And the movement, I think, is absolutely spurred by the Brian Flores lawsuit. And I think part of it today was know Roger Goodell got asked about this adding a minority in an offensive assistant position-- mandating it. And the league's thought process is, offensive coaches are getting hired like crazy, OK? And we need more minority positions. We need more minorities on the offensive side of the ball to start to grow that tree, grow the pool of candidates. This is clearly what teams are hiring. We need minorities groomed on this side of the ball. And it is just not happening right now. So we need to go ahead and attack it head on. SHALISE MANZA YOUNG: But they're there. They're there. They're there. Byron Leftwich should be the coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars. CHARLES ROBINSON: I'm not-- I'm not defending the stance or structure of it. SHALISE MANZA YOUNG: I know, you're just-- I'm not trying to shooting the messenger. But this idea-- because it just kind of feels like it goes back to, oh, the pipeline, the pipeline. It's there. There are men there. There are qualified, capable men of color on the offensive side of the ball who are there. You're just not hiring them. You're excluding them. And I struggle with this new thing about you have to have-- it's either an ethnic minority or a woman. And you know, to keep it 100, that puts me in a little bit of a mixed position. Because the data has shown that white women benefit more from affirmative action type rules than people of color do. So will it be great if we see a woman as an offensive coordinator in five or seven years? It would be amazing. But at the end of the day, I just am so pessimistic that anything's ever going to change and we're just going to keep seeing Black men, in particular, excluded from these positions. And you know, the gatekeepers in the NFL have been wrong all along. I mean, they deliberately excluded Black men from the game for years. Once they finally let them back in, it was only at the wide receiver or the running back position, because what was the thinking? Up until-- it still persists in some circles. Oh, Black men aren't leaders, they're not smart enough to be quarterbacks and all that kind of stuff. Well, that's been completely debunked because three or four of the best quarterbacks in the league right now are Black-- young Black quarterbacks. So it just feels like-- I'm just very pessimistic on this. I guess I shouldn't be, but I'm overly very pessimistic about-- CHARLES ROBINSON: Well, look. SHALISE MANZA YOUNG: This deliberate exclusion, it feels like. CHARLES ROBINSON: Track record supports pessimism. And it's endorsed pessimism, because there is a track record, particularly from the coaching standpoint of it. And let's be honest, there was a lot of pessimism when I started covering the league 20 years ago. There wasn't a plethora of Black quarterbacks at the position. It was still very much talked about like, hey, you know, it's never going to be an overwhelmingly mainstream position where you see Black players playing quarterback. And you know, it did change over time, but it was somewhat organic. It was someone on the collegiate level. Like, there was a number of factors that went into it. It wasn't just the NFL ramrodding it and going, we just need to-- it kind of did happen organically. Maybe that can happen organically here, although it's different, because it's talent acquisition versus leadership acquisition versus, you know, other elements of things that get measured. What I think, though, is interesting-- and I think the point I was trying to make was you see the NFL saying here's this thing that's not working. We just need to do this. And I think they even had to have known this is going to look like what I said-- ramrodding. Like, we're just straight up going-- but they're like-- I think the NFL is out of options. I don't think-- they're just like, look, we're just going to do it. Like, we don't care if people have an issue with it or not. Now it's a mandate. Like, we're done trying to entice, or incentivize, or all this other [BLEEP] We're just going to say, it's a mandate. We don't care.

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Is mandating that all 32 teams hire a diverse offensive assistant the right move for the NFL? | You Pod to Win the Game - Yahoo Sports