NFL ended minority offensive assistant mandate before '25 season - ESPN

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]