PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) -- Among the NFL's 32 head coach positions, only two out of seven openings this cycle went to minority hires. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell admitted Thursday at his annual "state of the league" press conference that it's not what they expect in the NFL now or going forward.
"We want to continue to look and see what went right and what went wrong. I think that has to happen with individual discussions with candidates both successful and unsuccessful candidates, the clubs and try to understand it," Goodell said.
The commissioner pointed to some positives -- for example, three new African-American general managers were hired in 2020 and 2021 -- but, he added, the team owners are committed to solving a diversity problem -- which continue to plague a league made up of 70% minority players.
"There are some real positives to build, and that’s what we’re gonna do, but we’re not satisfied, and we feel like we can do better and we’re going to," Goodell said.
Staged in Tampa Bay for in-person and virtual audiences, Goodell's conference also covered issues around the coronavirus pandemic, scheduling, and the NFL's working relationship with the players' union.
“I don’t know when normal will occur again or if normal will occur again,” he said. “I know we have learned to work in a very difficult environment, and we will do it again. That is one of the things we learned ... hearing clubs and the NFLPA saying our relationship has never been stronger. I interpret that as a trust that has been built here that will take us forward and will be the long-lasting legacy of this season.”
That legacy, on the positive side, includes something the other major sports leagues and organizations couldn't manage: playing a full season, uninterrupted, with the championship game on time despite COVID-19 issues.
“This was an extraordinary collective effort,” Goodell said. “There’s so many people that had to work together to get this done. There were doubters, people that didn’t believe we could do it, we had a lot of unknowns ourselves. We believed that staying on schedule and working to try to get 256 games done as we try to say, ’avoid the asterisk,' I think we were able to do that.”
The offseason structure for the league is so uncertain that Goodell preferred not to be specific about training camps and preseason games, though he did say the NFL plans to hold international games next season. There’s no timeline for when the league has to decide whether to go ahead with international games in 2021, however.
“We hope to get to be there,” he said. “We’re planning for it. We’ll make that decision whenever we have enough information to do so.”