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ESPN- Kris Rhim is a reporter for NFL Nation at ESPN. Kris covers the Los Angeles Chargers, including coach Jim Harbaugh's franchise-altering first season (https://espntoday.pages.dev//nfl/story/_/id/41068072/los-angeles-chargers-2024-preview-jim-harbaugh-culture). In Kris' free time, he lives his NBA dreams at men's leagues across Los Angeles.
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ESPN- Kalyn Kahler is a senior NFL writer at ESPN. Kalyn reports on a range of NFL topics. She reported about the influence of coaching agents on NFL hiring and found out what current and former Cowboys players really think about the tour groups of fans that roam about The Star every day. Before joining ESPN in July of 2024, Kalyn wrote for The Athletic, Defector, Bleacher Report and Sports Illustrated. She began her career at Sports Illustrated as NFL columnist Peter King's assistant. She is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she was a varsity cheerleader. In her free time, Kalyn takes Spanish classes and teaches Irish dance. You can reach out to Kalyn via email.
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Senior Writer, Andscape- Former columnist and Redskins beat writer for Washington Post
- Covered multiple beats over 15 years at Los Angeles Times
- University of Southern California graduate
The NFL ended a mandate that all 32 teams hire a minority coach as an offensive assistant ahead of the 2025 season and not because of recent pressure from Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who on Wednesday issued an investigative subpoena to the league over its hiring practices.
Uthmeier, who in March threatened potential civil action against the NFL over the league's Rooney Rule, said Wednesday that the NFL had changed diversity language on its website and that it had "capitulated on some of their discriminatory hiring quotas," while arguing that the revisions raise new questions about the policy.
He also took credit for the league ending the program to increase minority representation in assistant coaching ranks, a program started in 2022 after former coach Brian Flores sued the league. But ESPN learned of the league ending a mandate for the program this past winter.
"The NFL now contends -- apparently in response to our letter -- that the NFL has 'sunset' this mandate," the letter reads. "Given the NFL's history of open discrimination, however, we are skeptical that the mandate is no longer in place. And like the Rooney Rule, it violates Florida law."
Despite the NFL recently acknowledging the end of the program to Uthmeier, Jonathan Beane, the NFL's senior vice president for league leadership and inclusion, resisted that characterization in an interview in March.
He said that league office funding was never meant to be permanent. The league had been reimbursing clubs for half the salaries of coaches hired via the program.
"We didn't end it," Beane told ESPN. "... So that program is still in existence, but it's not mandatory for a club, and also it's not reimbursed.
"We have clubs that are hiring [minority] offensive assistants, and at this point, is there a need to necessarily continue to reimburse? Is there a need to necessarily mandate that? Or is it now a best practice we have as an organization?"
Two months after Flores' lawsuit in 2022, the NFL announced the initiative that mirrored a proposed change listed in the suit: "Increased Pipeline for Black Coaches." The lawsuit reads: "Teams should be required to have either a Black QB Coach or Assistant QB Coach to ensure a pipeline of experienced candidates for Offensive Coordinator and Head Coach positions."
That year, the NFL mandated that all 32 teams hire a minority coach as an offensive assistant, with half the salary reimbursed by a leaguewide fund. The resolution stated that the minority offensive assistant must have "regular and direct contact" with the head coach and the offensive coordinator, offensive line, quarterbacks and tight ends coaches, with duties that included contributing to offensive game-planning.
The league office touted the program widely at the start, but Beane said the league couldn't ensure that every team actually used the minority offensive assistant in the QB room or in offensive game-planning.
"I think [the hiring mandate] had some success in some areas and not as much success in other areas," Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney II, the chair of the league's diversity committee, told ESPN in March.
Beane said that all 32 clubs were in compliance with the mandate from its inception but that the role of offensive assistant varied by club, so, "not everyone was in the QB room."
"We have some [clubs] that would do that, and some would say, 'Well, I also want my offensive assistant doing some other things as well.'"
Former NFL assistant coach Kenneth "K.J." Black got his start in the NFL through this hiring mandate, as an assistant with the Los Angeles Rams in 2022. Coach Sean McVay promoted Black before the 2023 season to be an offensive assistant, and Black worked with the wide receivers.
By the time the league discontinued the hiring requirement, Black had left the Rams to follow defensive coordinator Raheem Morris to the Atlanta Falcons in a full-time role as an offensive assistant. Still, he told ESPN the move by the league was "confusing" and "disappointing."
Black said that the program was important because it tackled one of the biggest challenges minority coaches face: finding a place in a league dominated by relationships among white coaches. "Because of it, I met people I probably never would have met," Black said.
Morris, Black and much of Atlanta's staff were fired this past January. Black is now the offensive coordinator at South Carolina State.
After Black's departure in 2024, the Rams hired Nate Scheelhaase, who was the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Iowa State, as an offensive assistant. The Rams promoted Scheelhaase to offensive coordinator in February 2026, and he interviewed for five head coaching jobs this offseason. Beane pointed to Scheelhaase as the program's most notable success story.
Scheelhaase told ESPN the program "accelerated his development" because he was able to learn directly from McVay.
"It put me in rooms earlier than I felt I would be able to get into without it," he said. "And maybe it wouldn't have happened outside of that program being available to me to gain access to the head coach, the offensive coordinator and the quarterback room.
"Those are rooms that are sometimes sacred. That program provided proximity. And in this league, proximity matters."
