Eric Bieniemy Should Be A Head Coach: A Polemic
Let’s get to it. The fact that Eric Bieniemy has an expiring contract with the Kansas City Chiefs and has not been hired as a head coach in a span of over three years is pretty direct evidence of the racism that is systemic within the NFL, in fact I would argue that it serves as such strong evidence to be outright proof. To make that claim, we’re going to go case by case and argue why Bieniemy, who is obviously the most qualified head coaching candidate working in the league, would be an obviously superior hire, at least based on pure resume qualifications, (I’ll be more specific about this later) than any of the men who have been hired, most of whom are white.
New Orleans Saints: Dennis Allen, former Saints defensive coordinator
This is the one that really pissed me off so we’re leading with it. A few days ago, reports emerged that Bieniemy had been interviewed for eight hours by the New Orleans Saints, a currently woe begotten franchise who had a bad record in their first year following the retirement of their franchise quarterback Drew Brees. Head coach Sean Payton, having won a super bowl with that team and having struggled for years to return to the big dance, has somewhat reasonably decided to step away and take a year off. (Kinda cowardly by NFL head coaching standards, but that’s a different discussion.)
Instead, the Saints decided to hire from within, promoting their own (white) defensive coordinator Dennis Allen. I don’t have anything bad to say about Dennis Allen. The Saints defense is incredible, absolutely shredding Tom Brady apart in each of their four regular season matchups since Brady joined divisional rival Tampa Bay prior to the 2020 season, a figure which I think explains it pretty well even without going into the deeper numbers.
But you know what? Let’s do that anyway. I’ll do this in my preferred order: basic per-game stats, efficiency-based per-play stats, and then the much more advanced EPA. The Saints were 7th in overall yards allowed per-game, and 4th in points allowed, allowing less than 20 points per game on average. That’s pretty damn great. That is also reflected on a per-play basis, with the Saints being 5th in yards allowed per play at 5.1. That doesn’t sound particularly good when that means the Saints theoretically allowed a first down every two plays, but of course that’s not the reality of the situation, which I think is best reflected in EPA. [Spoilers: I gave up on every non-EPA metric for every other example because it was wasting my time. — ed/me.]
For those unfamiliar, EPA, Expected Points Added, is a stat that attempts to evaluate each play an offense makes or defense allows in terms of how that play would be valued in actual points if every play actually did score points rather than just scoring yards. In essence, it judges whether a play contributed to winning, attempting to cut through the chaff of misleading statistics such as an otherwise respectable 7 yard run that happens to occur on 3rd and 27 where that usually good play is effectively meaningless. Such a play would likely score negative EPA. EPA, which is I think the best stat for measuring the onfield effectiveness of both offenses and defenses, shows that the Saints were the best per-play defense in the NFL, allowing -0.126 EPA per play and a Success Rate (plays where the offense added expected points) of less than 40%, meaning that offenses playing against them were only able to actually get closer to winning a football game on every 2 out of 5 plays on average. The average Saints defensive drive, essentially, was a three and out.
The easiest counter to these very impressive numbers is a piece of wisdom from Ben Baldwin, the creator of the site I use to source these numbers: in the modern NFL, a lot of times the quality of a defense is shaped by the quality of offenses they play. If we hop over to offensive EPA, we can see that the Saints did face 4 top offenses in the NFL in 2021: Tampa Bay twice, the Packers, and the Bills. Moreover, the Saints won three of those four games by, to repeat myself, absolutely shredding Tom Brady (including one of the only shutout losses of Brady’s career) and also embarrassing Aaron Rodgers in week 1, although they were defeated soundly by the Bills. (As we go here I’m going to be using groupings of four rather than the conventional 5/10/etc because the league has 32 teams and that makes the actual categories break much more cleanly.) A 3–1 record against top 4 offenses (top 12.5%), very good. They lost to the 8th ranked Cowboys (3–2 against the top 25%), but also notched victories against 9th-ranked New England, and against 12th ranked Seattle, thus they land on a 5–2 record against the top 1/3rd of offenses in the NFL as measured by EPA/play. All of this is very good, but they also registered a loss against the worst offense in the league, the New York Giants, along with losses to the Panthers, Falcons, Eagles, Titans, and Dolphins, none of whom were even close to elite offenses. Very impressive performances against high level teams, very bad performances against bad teams.
However, just to be fair before I close the EPA book here, it should be noted that Allen has been DC of the Saints since 2015, so let’s look at the EPA from his total tenure as Saints DC. That is essentially unimpeachable, with the Saints defense ranking 3rd in EPA/play over that period, and 2nd in success rate. Dennis Allen is an excellent coach. That’s not the point here.
You know what’s better than the Saints defense? The Chiefs offense under Eric Bieniemy. (I can already hearing you say “but Reid!/Mahomes!/Tyreek!/Kelce!” and we’re getting to that when I get to Brian Daboll.) To get a good look at a sample size comparable to Allen, we can separate this into EB’s time as the RB coach in KC (2013–2017) and his time as offensive coordinator (2018-present.) From 2013–2017 the Chiefs had the 6th best rushing EPA/play in the league (it was negative EPA, but it should be noted across this period literally every team in football registered negative EPA/rush), with a rushing success rate that admittedly was a less impressive 13th. (More like 11th when you consolidate tied scores.) This is, admittedly, not as impressive as the Saints defense, however it should also be noted that these were Andy Reid teams where running the ball tends to be a secondary element of the offense to put it politely.
But you know that’s not what we’re here to talk about. Since EB took over as offensive coordinator in 2018 following the ascension of Patrick Mahomes into the starting QB role, the Chiefs have been far and away the best and most efficient offense in football, ranking first in EPA/play, being far ahead of the also-awesome Packers offense by a pretty measurable distance. Is that all Mahomes? Well a lot of it is, but if you want to eliminate that entire portion of the game, the Chiefs have also been 5th in rushing EPA/play since that time as well, indicating an overall improvement from when EB was merely the runningbacks coach. Whether EB “calls plays” or merely helps Andy Reid make decisions, etc, the fact of the matter is that Greg Roman got immense credit for helping to shape Lamar Jackson’s historic 2019 MVP season, and deserves it, whereas Bieniemy has gotten zero comparable credit for guiding Mahomes to easily the most statistically impressive “debut” season by a quarterback yet registered. That credit tends to go directly to the white head coach, Andy Reid.
Not a big fan of these “analytics?” Ok, how about just wins and losses? And if you don’t like analytics, I’m sure you don’t care about regular season wins either , let’s get to the good shit, playoff records. That’s an easy win for Bieniemy, who, in his 4 seasons as the offensive coordinator has: coached in an overtime loss in the AFC championship game in 2018, won the Super Bowl in 2019, lost the Super Bowl in 2020, (and this was with a banged up QB and offensive line,) and ran up a 27–3 score on the Bengals in this year’s AFC championship game before his quarterback got the yips. He has literally not had a bad season as a coordinator, plain and simple, cut and dry, nothing you can say to rebut that. By contrast, Allen has coordinated three seasons where the Saints didn’t make the playoffs, and their greatest accomplishment was losing the NFC championship game in 2018. Perhaps Dennis Allen didn’t have great offensive support? Wait, no, actually, his head coach was Sean Payton, a brilliant offensive mind, and Drew Brees, a first ballot hall of fame QB who spent a few years trading accumulation records with Tom Brady in spite of starting his career a year later. I’m not gonna call Dennis Allen a loser, but you’d literally have to be racist to tell me that he’s better at being a defensive coordinator than Eric Bieniemy is at being an offensive coordinator.
“But the Saints have to fulfill their obligation to the Rooney rule!” Assuming EB was the only black coach interviewed: get some other regular Joe to fill that obligatory spot. But don’t interview the most qualified head coaching candidate in football for 8 hours just to promote your own internal white guy who has, objectively, a worse record as both a coordinator and as a “winner.” In fact, the choice to interview the overqualified Bieniemy rather than an up-and-coming black coach is itself a different issue since that’s an interview another coach hasn’t gotten that they can use to leverage for better pay or other interviews. In short: Fuck the Saints. Next.
New York Giants: Brian Daboll, former Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator
Congratulations New York, you just hired Diet Eric Bieniemy. One of the league’s best offenses? Sure, but not as good as Bieniemy’s. Coached up a quarterback? I get the idea that because Allen had a bad two years on paper already that Daboll is getting credit for his improvement, but when you flip the perspective on that, you’re basically discrediting Eric Bieniemy for NOT having to coach up a “““bad””” quarterback. I should remind everyone that Mahomes and Allen are both top-10 first round quarterbacks, and also that Brian Daboll was the offensive coordinator, and not, y’know, the quarterbacks coach.
Also, and this will shock you to know, his resume before the year 2020? A lot worse. In 2009 and 2010 he was the offensive coordinator for the Cleveland Browns, who ranked as the 30th of 32 offenses by EPA across his two years coordinating. In 2011 he coordinated the Dolphins, leading the 18th best offense by EPA. In 2012, coordinating the Kansas City Chiefs, they were the 31st of 32 offenses by EPA. In 2013–2016 he was the tight ends coach in New England, congrats on coaching Gronk after he already peaked. His resume finally gets good when he goes to . . . wait that’s not an NFL team! ALABAMA, the most unstoppable juggernaut in college football history well before he arrived before getting the job in Buffalo. Apparently one of the questions we ask about Bieniemy is “is it all just Mahomes and Reid?” but for this guy we refuse to ask whether he was being carried by Nick Saban. It’s only in 2018 that he shows up to the Bills, and at this point his resume gets good right? Uh, no, in 2018 the Bills had the 31st ranked offense by EPA. Yes Allen only started 11 games, no he wasn’t very good in them. So that whole part where Josh Allen kinda sucked for a while? Daboll was a part of that. I didn’t even know that when I started drafting this, I thought he showed up in 2019 or 2020 when the Bills finally started showing up. Do things improve in 2019? Allen gets a tiny bit better, and the Bills got up to a super duper impressive fucking 20th in offense as ranked by EPA.
It’s not just that Bieniemy is being discredited for not having bad QB play under his tenure as I initially thought, it’s that Daboll is getting credit for his quarterback sucking for half of his fucking tenure as OC.
Fuck the Giants. Next.
Denver Broncos: Nathaniel Hackett, former Green Bay Packers OC
Congratulations, you just hired Diet Brian Daboll.
Much like Bieniemy, Hackett has done his job in properly using high level talent to its fullest extent, getting his quarterback two consecutive MVP awards, and generally not making any egregiously bad offensive playcalls to lose his team games in the postseason. As a coordinator with the Packers from 2019–2021, Hackett was among the league’s best, although, as we already know, his offense was not as good as the Chiefs, and if you wanted to, you could pin that on him given that the trio of Rodgers/Adams/Jones is about as strong a trio at those positions as Mahomes/Hill/Kelce, although in this case I’m gonna give Hackett some slack because a RB almost by definition cannot impact the game at the level of an elite receiving TE, especially Travis Kelce. Why the Packers are trying to lean on a run game that much is up for serious debate and I’d say is part of the ongoing story of that franchise openly hating their own quarterback who they refuse to get rid of or let leave, but that’s an entirely different story. Point is: Hackett did his job, EB does his.
. . . but his earlier resume certainly doesn’t make him more deserving. In 2013 he was the offensive coordinator for the Bills, who ranked 27th in EPA/play. After that he became the quarterbacks coach for the Jaguars, and thankfully the website I use can isolate quarterback EPA, so let’s take a look. Across those two years, Blake Bortles was 31st in QB EPA/play, just above Brock Osweiler and below Joe Flacco. In 2016 he took over as Jags offensive coordinator until 2018 when he was hired by Green Bay. The Jags had the 27th ranked offense by EPA/play during that time. If you’re seriously going to ask whether I’m blaming Nathaniel Hackett for Blake Bortles, then take a deep look and really ask yourself why Eric Bieniemy gets zero credit for Patrick Mahomes.
Fuck the Broncos. Next.
Chicago Bears: Matt Eberflus, former Colts defensive coordinator
Chicago has a young quarterback to develop, so of course for their next head coach they hired Colts defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus, tenured in that position from 2018–2021. In that period the Colts had the 27th ranked defense by EPA allowed per play. I’m not going to elaborate on this further.
Fuck the Bears. Next.
Las Vegas Raiders: Josh Fucking McDaniels, are you FUCKING kidding me?
Eric Bieniemy clearly can’t succeed without Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes, so let’s take a guy who already had a head coaching job in Denver that was a spectacular failure precisely because his system was not as successful without the Bellichick defense or Tom Brady at quarterback. Was that a decade ago? Better question, does it seem like I give an inkling of a fuck? This is a guy who got fired in part because he got caught doing the Patriot Way shit and filming another team’s practice, by the way, so definitely a fit for the Raiders culture.
The first stint as a head coach is bad enough, but what many people seem to have forgotten is the second, where he signed as the Indianapolis Colts head coach and then quit before the season. Once again, I give zero fucks about the context of this move given that there are zero, zero, zero black coaches in the NFL who would surive a stunt like this unless their name was Mike Tomlin, and I’m genuinely not sure that Tomlin would even pull it off given that the guy has zero losing seasons and he still gets a ton of (mostly deserved) heat.
In conclusion, coaches from the Bellichick tree not named Bill Bellichick won zero super bowls, whereas Reid coaching tree coaches not named Andy Reid have won two, Harbuagh’s Ravens in 2012, Pederson’s Eagles in 2017. Just sayin.
In Conclusion: This Whole Process Is A God Damn Joke
I called this a polemnic for a reason. I’m not entertaining the idea, even remotely, that when the primary basis of qualification is, y’know, qualifications, that Eric Bieniemy isn’t far and away the best head coaching candidate available. I feel like I’ve done plenty to demonstrate that from the perspective of both statistics and wins and losses, Bieniemy has done his job better than any of these white men who’ve been hired instead of him, and by the way, he’s also a lot better than Lovie Smith and Mike MacDaniel too.
Without going deep into the weeds on other reasons, things like “his past,” (Urban Meyer was a head coach last year, end of discussion on that one) or “has he coached up his QB?” or any of this other flat out nonsense, I feel like most of those can be pretty easily dismissed when you acknowledge that we’re essentially discrediting the black man in the discussion for not having “overcome” any of the “obstacles” that most of these other coaches have put in their own way by accepting bad jobs or even just outright not being all that good at them. All of that “contextual” stuff may credit these white men, but giving them that credit in its own way discredits Eric Bieniemy’s literally flawless resume of success on the NFL level.
If Eric Bieniemy is not offered a head coaching job by the end of next year and the Brian Flores lawsuit is ongoing, he may as well give up the rest of his coaching career and join that suit or start his own, because it genuinely seems at this point that the only thing he could do to be considered qualified would be to know the right people (be white), “interview better” (be white), or make less demands about how the team be run (be white).
To put it very simply, there are some reasons Bieniemy has not been hired, and the one that cuts through everything else like occam’s razor is the fact that he is a black man, and a black man who, yes, over 20 years ago had run ins with the law, assaulted a female security guard, and got his license suspended. Keep in mind that rap sheets worse than that would never, ever, in a thousand years, prevent you from playing in the NFL or even being voted into the Hall of Fame, but apparently it makes it difficult for you to become a coach in the NFL. Really seriously consider why that might be and what it means to be a black man in this league. It’s either that, or any of the really petty shit listed above, all of which can be pretty easily summed up as “he’s not white” when you’re not actively trying to convince yourself that’s not what’s going on.
He could also do the unthinkable and debase himself by becoming the OC on a bad team to try and make them better, or even worse, take a college head coaching job. As regards either of those last two options I advise Bieniemy to heed the words of Mike Tomlin: “Never say never, but never.”
Fuck this shit, I’m out. If you wanna argue with me about this, don’t.
— Durante Pierpaoli, Lynnwood, WA, 2022
