Eric Bieniemy Has Been Kicked Out of Line for the NFL’s Head-Coaching Carousel
Nearly half the NFL has interviewed the Chiefs offensive coordinator for a head-coaching vacancy in the past five years. Despite Kansas City’s continued offensive dominance and Bieniemy’s second ring, the league seems to have lost interest. Will his time ever come?
Eric Bieniemy was undoubtedly one of the stars of the Chiefs’ Super Bowl LVII win. Yes, it might seem easy to be the offensive coordinator for future Hall of Fame QB Patrick Mahomes, future Hall of Fame tight end Travis Kelce, and future Hall of Fame head coach Andy Reid, who calls plays on offense for Kansas City. But those legends and other members of the champion Chiefs were quick to point out the ways in which Bieniemy contributed to their second Super Bowl championship. Specifically, it was Bieniemy who identified the flaw in Philadelphia’s defensive tendencies which led to two Chiefs touchdowns in their second-half comeback: Backup quarterback Chad Henne told The Athletic that Bieniemy noticed the Eagles seemed so nervous about the idea of the Chiefs running a jet sweep near the goal line that they’d overcommit to stopping it. So, the Chiefs scored two easy touchdowns on faked jet sweeps as they roared back from a double-digit deficit to win the title:
Mahomes credited Bieniemy for making sure Jerick McKinnon knew to slide just outside the end zone late in the fourth quarter, which allowed the Chiefs to nearly run the clock out before kicking a game-winning field goal: “Even though sometimes we get tired of them talking about those moments, they always seem to happen in the biggest games,” Mahomes said. “He makes sure we go through the details about them every single week.” After the game, Mahomes called Bieniemy “one-of-a-kind, one of the greatest,” while Reid called him “phenomenal” and “tremendous down the stretch.”
But their effusive praise once again wasn’t enough to get Bieniemy a head-coaching job. None of the five teams with head-coaching jobs chose Bieniemy. In fact, he wasn’t even seriously considered. Only the Colts scheduled an interview with him, and he reportedly wasn’t one of the seven finalists who made it to a second round of interviews with Indianapolis. The Broncos, Panthers, and Texans apparently didn’t need to interview Bieniemy at all because they previously interviewed him in the process of hiring coaches they’ve already fired.
Bieniemy has effectively been kicked off the NFL’s coaching carousel. The former All-American running back at Colorado was promoted to the role of offensive coordinator in Kansas City in 2018—the year that Patrick Mahomes first started at quarterback and began laying waste to the NFL. Every offseason from 2019 to 2022, Bieniemy was interviewed by at least two NFL teams. In 2021, six of seven franchises with head-coaching openings brought Bieniemy in. It seemed inevitable that he’d get the call sooner or later. But this year, after the Chiefs led the NFL in points per game and yards per play, after they reinvented their offense after trading away Tyreek Hill (who also praises Bieniemy, by the way), and after they won the Super Bowl by scoring 38 points on a strong defense, he was passed over once again. Two teams still had coaching vacancies on Super Bowl Sunday; they were filled by Tuesday with the two coordinators who lost to the Chiefs in the Super Bowl. (Imagine watching the Chiefs score two walk-in touchdowns against the Eagles and thinking, Man, I’ve got to hire the guy who didn’t adjust that defense, and not, Man, I’ve got to hire the guy who schemed up that offense, but that’s what the Cardinals just did when they picked Jonathan Gannon.)
At this point in his career, Bieniemy has been interviewed for head-coaching jobs 16 times by 15 NFL franchises, according to USA Today’s data. (The Jets have interviewed him twice.) Whatever process these teams are using to select coaches besides Bieniemy is not working: Only three of the 16 coaches (Bruce Arians, Brandon Staley, and Zac Taylor) picked over Bieniemy since 2019 have made the playoffs, while seven (Adam Gase, Urban Meyer, Nathaniel Hackett, David Culley, Brian Flores, Joe Judge, and Matt Rhule) have been fired. You may notice that some of the coaches hired instead of Bieniemy make the list of the absolute worst hires in NFL history.
Being the offensive coordinator of a team in the Super Bowl is generally a pretty good way to get an NFL head-coaching job. Of the last nine OCs in the Super Bowl besides Bieniemy—both winners and losers—five are now NFL head coaches. (Brian Callahan is still the Bengals OC; Byron Leftwich has since been fired by the Buccaneers.) We could also include Zac Taylor, who landed the Bengals job after serving as QB coach for the 2018 Rams. But Bieniemy has been the OC in three Super Bowls in four years, has won two rings, and still has no head-coaching job.
The common argument against hiring Bieniemy is that his success is just a product of Reid. Normally, simply being in the presence of a coaching genius for an extended period of time is enough for a coordinator to get a head-coaching job—if the genius liked this guy, he’s probably good, and maybe some of that genius rubbed off. It’s why we’ve seen 11 of Bill Belichick’s assistants become head coaches, even ones who weren’t play callers and who had little on their résumés besides working for the Patriots legend. Hell, we’ve even seen four of Sean McVay’s top assistants become head coaches. And this wasn’t a big hang-up when hiring Bieniemy’s predecessors, former Chiefs offensive coordinators Doug Pederson and Matt Nagy. Both were hired as head coaches after working with Reid even though they weren’t the primary play caller; with their new teams, Nagy won NFL Coach of the Year and Pederson won a Super Bowl (though both were eventually fired). (A different Reid protégé, Mike Kafka, emerged as a hot head-coaching candidate this year, interviewing for four of the five open jobs. Kafka is currently the Giants OC, but he previously worked under Reid and Bieniemy as the Chiefs QB coach, meaning Bieniemy has been surpassed on the coaching candidate hierarchy by his former subordinate.)
The reality is that teams hire offensive assistants who didn’t call plays pretty regularly! Nick Sirianni didn’t call plays for the Colts when the Eagles hired him, and Taylor and Kevin O’Connell didn’t call plays for McVay’s Rams, and those hires worked out quite well for the Bengals and Vikings, respectively. And when the Eagles hired Reid way back in 1999, he had never called plays before either. (Hackett didn’t call plays for the Packers when he was hired by the Broncos, but he sure aced his interview.)
Word around the league is that Bieniemy interviews poorly, whatever that means. Never mind that he was trying to prepare for interviews while in the midst of Super Bowl runs, or that he has clearly won over all the Chiefs players who ride for him—his inability to win over front-office suits apparently outweighs his on-field success. There could also presumably be some concerns among league owners about Bieniemy’s 2001 DUI arrest, his 1993 arrest for suspicion of harassment and assault on a parking lot attendant working a Colorado football game, and an arrest as a college sophomore for a bar fight. These are real red flags, but it seems odd that these decades-old offenses would make so many NFL owners finally draw some moral line in the sand.
Bieniemy is now interviewing with other teams to become their offensive coordinator—presumably so he can call plays and show that he can succeed without Reid and Mahomes. He interviewed with the Commanders on Thursday, and there is reportedly “mutual interest.” To be clear, a lateral move like this is exceedingly rare: The last time an NFL offensive coordinator left one OC job for another without being fired or their head coach switching jobs was in 2018, five offseasons ago, when Matt LaFleur left the Rams for the Titans, where he was given play-calling duties. That it’s happening with a two-time Super Bowl champion days after he won a title is almost unbelievable. Bieniemy accomplished so much as an offensive coordinator but is still being asked to prove he can win without Reid, even though Reid’s past offensive coordinators were not asked to do the same. And if he takes the Washington job and fails to revamp a Commanders team that finished 24th in scoring last year, led by an aging, turnover-prone Carson Wentz, the NFL will take it as proof he wasn’t good all along.
Absent legitimate-sounding reasons Bieniemy is the only assistant coach this successful to not get a top job, you have to wonder whether Bieniemy is being held to a higher standard because of his race. Only two of the 16 jobs Bieniemy interviewed for went to other Black coaches, and one of those, Brian Flores, now has an active lawsuit against the NFL accusing the league of racial discrimination. Decades of data show Black head coaches are hired less frequently and are fired more quickly. The league may have policies in place to promote diversity in hiring for coaches and general managers, but these decisions are ultimately made by NFL owners, and there has never been a Black one. (Also, maybe we should please call them “governors” or “members” instead of owners? The NFL doesn’t want them to sound … well, you know.)
Bieniemy being included in so many coaching searches is supposed to be a sign that he has received opportunities in the league’s supposed meritocracy. Now, years of faux inclusion and interviews that led nowhere have effectively excluded him from the head-coaching market. The fact that so many teams have turned Bieniemy down has become self-evident proof that he must be a bad candidate, even though he has continued to shine with the Chiefs and the coaches hired instead have broadly failed. (Once again: Adam Gase, Urban Meyer, Nathaniel Hackett, and Joe Judge were picked over him.) Nearly half the league has made the decision to overlook Bieniemy, and the rest of the league has decided to take those teams’ poor choices as gospel.
Bieniemy has been one of the top coaching candidates in football for years now, yet the NFL has essentially moved on from considering him as a potential head coach. We’re supposed to believe this has happened because of résumé rather than race—but we’ve seen the actual results of the NFL head-coaching searches. It’s always about qualifications until the most qualified candidate is Black.