His record in key appointments has been deficient. In his 33 years as owner, Jones has had eight head coaches, all White. During that time, just two of the team’s offensive or defensive coordinators, the steppingstones to head coaching positions, have been Black, including none since 2008. Maurice Carthon, who was offensive coordinator under Bill Parcells in 2003 and 2004, said he had a good relationship with Jones — both grew up in Arkansas — but he never sensed he had a realistic shot at the top job with him. Or with any other owner. “I can’t say that I was close at any time,” Carthon said. “I think all of them are failing.” Carthon retired in 2012 after coaching stints with seven teams.
Jones’s responses to questions about that seminal event 6½ decades ago fit a pattern that revealed itself again in his dealings with the issue of Black coaches. He is an enthralling storyteller but also a master of deflection, so absorbed in his own success story that he tends to filibuster and evade when questions get too close to a racial reckoning.
Though the room is now moderately lit, it’s apparent that there is something Jones either can’t or won’t perceive: Black coaches in the NFL are straining to succeed, but they aren’t getting a return on their efforts.
A Washington Post investigation found that the Black men who became NFL head coaches in the past decade, on average, spent more than nine years longer than their White counterparts in mid-level assistant jobs. And when they do get the job, they are likely to be fired more quickly. Jones’s own hiring record is proof of this.
The question, as Jones sees it, is how to escort Black coaches into the circle of cronyism so they don’t
have to be interviewed. Jones insists the most avid candidates will find a way in.
The story landed hard. Jones seemed clueless that invoking a backdoor oil deal at a rich man’s private club in the Deep South, notorious for not admitting its first Black member until 1990
, was less than useful advice to the men sitting in front of him.
“It was not good,” recalled someone who was in the audience. “It was very much a ‘be grateful you’re in the NFL and have this opportunity’ tone. … I don’t know any White guys who let me bring my friends to the Masters on a random whim. I don’t have that type of access.”
Asked how he imagined that story sounded to a mid-level Black coach whose network does not include White members of Augusta National — and who has met an implacable resistance that NFL owners will not name — Jones falls quiet.
In many ways, Jones is the NFL owners’ representative man. He is 80. Twelve owners were born in the 1940s or earlier. Collectively, the owners’ average age is 70. Generationally, most grew up in the
era of segregation. Socially, most of them continue to move in circles that are just as racially segregated today.
But at this moment, Jones is trying to think. After nearly 20 seconds, he says gently: “We are not born equal. Anybody that says we’re equal, well, you’re wrong. … Some of us can talk it better than others. Some of us were better quarterbacks in college. … You got to figure your angle out. Lay awake, figuring it out. If you want it as bad — remember, you’re trying to get something that’s almost impossible to get, one of these jobs — you somehow got to figure the angle out. And that’ll separate the ones that can.”