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The league is continuing efforts to foster diversity.

While the players of the NFL are generally a very diverse group, the league has noticed recently that those who make up the bulk of team staff, especially coaching staff, are not. As part of ongoing efforts to foster greater diversity within the NFL, the league announced a new requirement today that all NFL teams must have at least one minority hire as an offensive assistant coach. This person can be “a female or a member of an ethnic or racial minority.”

“It’s a recognition that at the moment, when you look at stepping stones for a head coach, they are the coordinator positions,” said Pittsburgh Steelers owner and chairman of the NFL Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee Art Rooney II. “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 [job].”

All NFL teams will hire a minority offensive assistant coach for the 2022 season, part of a series of policy enhancements announced to address the league's ongoing diversity efforts.

The coach can be "a female or a member of an ethnic or racial minority." https://t.co/BfwPearVu0

— ESPN (@espn) March 29, 2022

“The truth of the matter is that as of today, at least, there aren’t many women in the pool in terms of head coach,” Rooney said. “We hope that is going to change over the years, but for that reason we didn’t see it as inhibiting the number of interviews for racial minorities at this point in time. Obviously, we can address that as time goes on, but for now we didn’t see that as an issue.

“Really, we are looking at probably the early stages of women entering the coaching ranks, so we may be a little ways away before that becomes a problem.”