Malcolm Jenkins on Rooney Rule expansion: 'I thought it was disrespectful'
Malcolm Jenkins is not going to stay quiet.
After 13 seasons in the NFL as a dependable safety, after three Pro Bowls and two Super Bowl championships, Jenkins announced his retirement Wednesday. In his first day away from the game, he gave an interview to Paste BN Sports in which he advocated for NFL teams to hire more Black coaches. And he didn't stop there, either. Jenkins also criticized a recent expansion to the Rooney Rule that he feels falls short in trying to achieve that objective.
"I thought it was disrespectful," Jenkins said Thursday. "The Rooney Rule already was not working. It's now further away from what we want to get accomplished."
While Jenkins said he's in favor of more diverse workspaces in the NFL and across the country, he specifically wants to see targeted and intentional changes that make the coaching population more closely reflect the player population, in essence, more Black coaches.
"These are family-owned businesses," Jenkins said. "Let's be realistic about our approach. We want the people in charge to invest in the folk who make them money, essentially. That's what we want. The players in the league make up — whatever the percentage is — the majority are Black. They make you your money. The entire business is built off their backs. There are plenty of Black coaches out here — male and female — who can add value to what is already being done.
"I think that's what the conversation really needs to center around. Not that you owe us jobs, or that we need to put you in a headlock to say: 'Hire who we say you should hire.' We're just confused that you're leaving meat on the table, leaving money on the table, leaving quality talent buried under your staffs because you don't believe in their abilities."
On Monday, the NFL announced an expansion to the long-standing Rooney Rule that represented the first hiring mandate in the 19-year existence of the rule. Starting with this upcoming season, each of the 32 teams will be required to employ an offensive assistant coach who is "a female or a member of an ethnic or racial minority." The term of those contracts, at a minimum, are mandated for only one season, something Jenkins said reinforces a troubling trend facing minorities in the workforce, where they need to work harder than their white colleagues just to stay in entry-level roles.
"It implies that they have to prove themselves competent enough to have the job," Jenkins said. "When, if you can ask the majority of these African American players in the league just how impactful and how qualified these coaches are, they'll tell you they're ready to step in. They just need the opportunity."
Steelers owner Art Rooney II, the chairman of the NFL Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee, said Monday that there is still much work to be done but that he felt the measure to expand the rule was a step in the right direction.
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"It's a recognition that, at the moment, when you look at steppingstones for a head coach, they are the coordinator positions," Rooney said Monday. "We clearly have a trend where coaches are coming from the offensive side of the ball in recent years, and we clearly do not have as many minorities in the offensive coordinator."
According to the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES), organized by Dr. Richard Lapchick at the University of Central Florida, which compiles its annual racial and gender report cards for major sporting leagues, 58% of the 1,725 NFL players surveyed in 2021 were Black or African American. Other data put that figure closer to 70%.
Yet, even after former Buccaneers head coach Bruce Arians retired Wednesday night and ushered in the tenure of new coach Todd Bowles, who is Black, that put the number of Black head coaches in the league at only three (9.4%). Mike Tomlin of the Steelers and Lovie Smith of the Texans are the other two.
Mike McDaniel of the Dolphins is biracial and joins Robert Saleh of the Jets and Ron Rivera of the Commanders as the only other minority head coaches in the NFL.
That means the rest of the 26 coaches of the NFL, or a whopping 81.3%, are white.
"I don’t have a level of confidence that would lead me to believe that things are going to be better,” Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said this week at the NFL annual meetings. "I’m more of a show-me guy as opposed to a guy that sits around and talks about things. I think that we’ve pecked around the entire discussion and subject and we’ve done a lot of beneficial things. But we’ve got to land the plane. We’ve got to hire capable candidates.”
Jenkins said the NFL has typically been reactionary with issues like these, enacting changes only when fans become loud enough to prompt it. One of the main frustrations Jenkins said he has with this issue is that "the fan base doesn't seem to really have a huge appetite" for more Black coaches to be hired, when compared with other issues.
That's where Jenkins and his fellow players come in. He said if external pressures aren't prompting owners or general managers and other franchise executives to change their hiring practices, then players and coaches need to use their platform to voice these concerns. Another key, he said, is that advocates should not accept concessions that fall short.
Jenkins takes it a step further. The sheer lack of Black coaches and coordinators, in his opinion, hurts the performance and focus of Black players in practice and on Sundays because it can lead to breakdowns in locker room culture. Jenkins said this lack of representation becomes most apparent — and can even become a divisive force — when coaches have to help players navigate off-field issues like family life, finances, and relationships.
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"I'll tell you right now that Black coaches, with the exception of a few, were able to relate to me a lot better," Jenkins said. "The majority of Black coaches that I've had have gotten the most out of me as a player because they could meet me where I'm at. I understand why you may want to hire somebody that makes you comfortable at ownership, but if the goal is ultimately to win and make players the best they can be, then you want the person that you put in charge of them to reflect them."
Jenkins stresses that his comments are in no way a blanket statement or a claim that white coaches or coaches of other ethnicities can't relate to Black players, but merely a reflection of his experience and a recognition of the disproportionate ratio of white coaches to Black players.
"It's the same as in education," Jenkins continued. "How do we expect a Black kid to ever believe that he can be a leader, a boss, or somebody of importance if all the literature is about white heroes? If all of the teachers or principles or people in front of them are all white characters? One would always assume, even if they excelled, that they went through their whole childhood without seeing themselves as the example. Those things matter."
Just because Jenkins, 34, is retiring from the NFL doesn't mean he won't continue to speak out on these issues. He has co-founded several businesses, including Listen Up Media, a multimedia production company with the mission to showcase and distribute content that creates social awareness around systemic issues in society. He launched Broad Street Ventures, a $10 million investment vehicle funded entirely by Black and brown investors, including a group of fellow NFL players. He started Disrupt Foods, a multiunit franchise developer and operator of 20-plus quick service restaurants aiming to level the economic playing field for Blacks and Hispanics through franchise ownership.
Jenkins said he was going to take "a little bit of a break from the game" before he started thinking about coaching, but said he's very interested in broadcasting. But his primary focus, he said, is to invest in the community he comes from.
"I am a resource," Jenkins said. "I've had the same phone number since college. Please reach out to me if you're trying to organize and want to learn how we did it and want to know some of our mistakes and pitfalls to look out for. Because as strong a voice as I've had, and as strong an impact I've made, I'm not an NFL quarterback. I'm not a superstar in the NBA. It can go further."
Contributing: Associated Press