Patriots Coaching Search and Hire Spark Latest Rooney Rule Controversy

Fans celebrated as the Patriots cut ties with former player-turned-head coach Jerod Mayo and hired another ex-New England defender, Mike Vrabel, to take his place at the helm of the franchise. While many across the league ranked Foxborough as the number-one coaching destination this offseason (and celebrated the hiring of the former Tennessee Titans head coach accordingly), critics pointed to perceived flaws in the Pats’ coaching search that seemed to implicate the NFL’s longstanding Rooney Rule. Should this latest controversy be a sign to the league that their diversity rule may need to be updated?

Mayo’s Brief Tenure

In January 2024, after the legendary Bill Belichick had led the team for twenty-four years, Patriots owner Robert Kraft hired Jerod Mayo, a 2008 New England draftee who spent his entire eight-year career with the team, to take over the roster. The former middle linebacker returned to Foxborough as an inside linebackers coach in 2019 and became the youngest head coach in the NFL (and the first Black head coach in Patriots history) at thirty-seven years old with the promotion. Notably, Mayo was able to avoid a lengthy hiring process—and the Patriots, by extension, the Rooney Rule—because his 2023 contract extension with the team included “a firm, contractual succession plan.” This was not the first instance of a team’s succession plan allowing them to expedite the hiring process, but it is important context that helps explain why Mayo’s replacement has been so controversial.

While Belichick left big shoes to fill, Mayo took over a 4-13 team and generated plenty of optimism heading into the season, especially after a stunning victory in the Patriots’ season opener against the Cincinnati Bengals. However, the wheels quickly came off, and the team faltered as the season progressed, as New England ultimately stumbled into the fourth-worst record in the league despite the emergence of rookie quarterback Drake Maye. Mayo was unceremoniously fired by Kraft less than an hour after winning the team’s final game—which had simultaneously lost them the number one pick in the upcoming NFL Draft. While the Patriots owner reportedly admitted to rushing the hiring and publicly acknowledged it as an “untenable situation,” many fans were shocked to see such a quick termination of the coach who Kraft had handpicked five years prior to be Belichick’s successor. In a press conference after Mayo’s firing, Kraft vowed that his next coaching hire would correct the course of the franchise and restore stability.

Vrabel’s Homecoming

After promising to get the Patriots back on track, Kraft made Mike Vrabel the first hire of the NFL coaching cycle this past Sunday. Vrabel, a member of the Patriots Hall of Fame and linebacker with the team for eight seasons (including three Super Bowls), won NFL Coach of the Year in 2021 with the Titans before being fired in 2023. Vrabel’s Titans also eliminated the Patriots from the playoffs in 2019 during Tom Brady’s final year with the team, adding a bittersweet twist to the coach’s return to New England. In Monday’s introductory press conference, Vrabel said he hopes to “galvanize this football team.” Vrabel (who was a consultant for the Cleveland Browns this past season) had front offices clamoring for his expertise, drawing interest from every team with a head coaching vacancy. Despite the overwhelming desire for Vrabel’s talents, observers around the league raised eyebrows at the Patriots’ quick selection process.

Rooney Rule and Hiring Controversy

So, what is the Rooney Rule, and why is it at issue in the Vrabel hiring? The NFL created the Rooney Rule (named after former NFL Workplace Diversity Committee chairman Dan Rooney) in 2003, requiring teams in need of a head coach to interview at least one diverse candidate before making a final hiring decision. In 2022, the Rooney Rule was expanded to include women as part of the “diverse candidate” category, the number of diverse candidates a given team was required to interview increased to two, and diverse candidate interviews were now required to be in person. While the committee initially focused on a lack of diversity in head coaching positions across NFL teams, later updates to the rule have expanded its scope to include a variety of other positions within a given franchise, including quarterbacks coach, general manager, and coordinator vacancies.

In hiring Vrabel, the Patriots drew the attention of many around the NFL in how they handled the process of their coaching interviews. During the first day of their coaching search, New England interviewed both Byron Leftwich and Pep Hamilton. Leftwich, an offensive coordinator, won the Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2020, while Hamilton, who is also an offensive coach, held various roles for several NFL teams over nine years. Neither coach has been in the league since 2022, nor do they necessarily appear to be in high demand—no other team has shown interest in interviewing either candidate. New England’s hiring committee also reportedly failed to gather key intel from either coach about their vision for how the Patriots would run under their guidance or how their past teams have operated. The interviews of these candidates, both Black men who satisfy the diversity requirement of the Rooney Rule, were announced in a single social media post without either coach ever being referenced again by the team.

After an interview with Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, Vrabel, who had been linked to the Patriots since before Mayo’s firing, was interviewed and hired within the week. As coaches on active playoff teams could not interview until this week (and coaches with a first-round bye could only interview virtually), New England was apparently unwilling to wait and thus hire from a full pool of applicants. This decision by the front office has led many to feel as though the Patriots simply interviewed minority candidates to “check a box” before proceeding with their preferred choice, fearing that they may lose Vrabel if they waited. These concerns were only further fueled by the fact that the coaching search took less than a week, as well as the report that Aaron Glenn, the defensive coordinator for the Lions (and another Black man), granted interview requests by every team with a head coaching vacancy and only denied one—the Patriots’. Glenn may have simply lacked interest in the job, but it’s also possible that he (like others across the league) viewed these interviews by New England as a means to satisfy a rule before making the inevitable hire of Vrabel.

While it is possible that Kraft and the Patriots truly did consider Leftwich and Hamilton (and sincerely wanted to interview Glenn), the way they handled said interviews—screening the candidates on the first day of their coaching search and lumping them into a single announcement—justifiably fuels Rooney Rule concerns. If New England engaged in improper hiring practices, could Leftwich or Hamilton pursue legal action?

Potential Legal Action?

To analyze whether a suit by any of these coaches would be viable against the Patriots or the NFL, it’s helpful to look back on Rooney Rule lawsuits of the past—namely that of another former Patriots staffer (and current Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator) Brian Flores. In 2022, Flores sued the Miami Dolphins, New York Giants, Denver Broncos, and the NFL as part of a class-action lawsuit. As part of his complaint, the former Dolphins head coach alleged that the Giants had decided their coaching hire three days before they interviewed Flores and that members of the Broncos front office had shown up to his interview hungover. Flores believes these actions indicated that teams were participating in “sham” interviews to comply with the Rooney Rule, never intending to truly consider diverse clients. Leftwich and Hamilton could try to argue that the Patriots did something similar by interviewing the minimum number of diverse candidates on the first day of their coaching search before deciding to go in another direction.

Both coaching candidates could also point to New England’s unorthodox general manager search from the previous year as evidence that the franchise may have previously skirted the spirit of the rule, too. There, Patriots former director of scouting Eliot Wolf began acting as GM in January 2024 after the firing of Belichick. Wolf then led the team through free agency and the NFL draft before having to engage in a formal interview (for the role he effectively already had) so that New England could maintain Rooney Rule compliance. Despite the Patriots’ shaky relationship with the rule, the same hurdles that the Flores case has faced could similarly hamper a claim by either of the New England interviewees.

As recently as September, the NFL has maintained the position that (much like their case against former Las Vegas Raiders head coach Jon Gruden) the claims made by Flores were preempted by his contract signed with the Dolphins because the deal contemplated arbitration in front of league commissioner Roger Goodell as a means of resolving such disputes. Thus, the league argued, Flores had to bring his claims in front of the commissioner, not a judge. While U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni agreed that Flores’ claims against his former team were properly arbitrable, she used the same logic to rule that the claims against the Giants and Broncos could be brought in federal court (as Flores did not have an employment contract with either team at the time of his interview). The potential for Flores to have to pursue part of his claim in court and part of his claim via arbitration has stalled his lawsuit as of late, showing the impact that the NFL’s arbitration power can have on such claims.

Leftwich and Hamilton were both unemployed by the Patriots (or any other team) at the time of their interviews, meaning they could feasibly bring claims in federal court, as Judge Caproni ruled in Flores’ case. However, unlike Flores, who provided text messages showing collusion amongst coaches as well as claims about Broncos staffers looking hungover and disheveled, the New England interviewees do not appear to have comparable evidence at this stage. Without more, it appears that the only “wrongdoing” the Patriots may have engaged in was interviewing two candidates early in the coaching cycle and on the same day. That said, the case still appears to be poised to go further than that of Flores, as Leftwich and Hamilton likely would not have to worry about arbitrating portions of their claims in front of Commissioner Goodell—though the coaches may fear backlash for making such a claim against a team and their front office.

Indeed, the suit by Flores led many to speculate that the Dolphins former frontman’s chances of landing a head coaching role moving forward could be negatively impacted, affirming that litigation against one’s former team may result in decreased NFL job prospects in the future. In spite of this negative outlook, the current Vikings defensive coordinator spurned these rumors by landing an interview with the Jacksonville Jaguars for their vacancy. Interestingly, Flores was also never interviewed by the Patriots as part of their coaching search (despite having interest). However, this may have been innocent—as mentioned above, coaches whose teams had a playoff game last week were unable to interview virtually for other roles until this week, and Flores would not have been able to complete an in-person interview with New England until after the Vikings’ season ended. In any event, the potential for Rooney Rule lawsuits against the league (or individual teams) by non-team employees should be a cause for deep concern for the NFL—and even alleged discrimination against those who filed such suits may not be enough to prevent these sorts of claims forever.

Avoiding Future Litigation: Updating the Rooney Rule

If the NFL wants to avoid future litigation over this well-intentioned rule, the league may want to consider an update. The Rooney Rule originally came into effect during a time when the league was 70% Black, and a 2003 civil rights study found that Black coaches were less likely to be hired (and more likely to be fired) than white coaches. While it is clear that diversity is needed in the NFL (and across sports more generally), it is also apparent that the rule has not had the impact its creators hoped for—as seen in other industries (i.e., Amazon, Meta, and Uber), which failed to see desired increases in senior leadership diversity after adopting versions of the Rooney Rule. What began as a rule with the purest of goals is now seemingly viewed by teams as making coaching searches more cumbersome as opposed to contributing to a more meaningful and substantial hiring process.

Moreover, this rule cannot simply be something that teams can minimally comply with or avoid without facing repercussions. Even if there is no wrongdoing to be found in the Patriots’ hire of Vrabel, the controversy surrounding the interview process (as well as the aforementioned suit by Flores) highlights that teams seemingly aren’t following the spirit of the rule as intended. If the NFL wants to keep diversity at the forefront of its league initiatives, change is needed—and quickly—to better serve those that the sport seeks to uplift. Otherwise, the NFL will continue to be faced with a sticky problem of teams finalizing their preferred candidates before the interview process even begins, rendering subsequent interviews meaningless. While success stories (like that of Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin) do exist, they appear to be the exception, not the standard. So how could the Rooney Rule be revamped?

One option would be to explore more stringent penalties for teams that do not genuinely and seriously consider diverse candidates. The Lions are the only team to have been punished under the Rooney Rule, and that penalty came in 2003, the rule’s first year in existence. The San Francisco 49ers were accused of violating the rule in 2017 (and will likely face punishment for a true violation that came this year), but the shocking lack of Rooney Rule penalties seems to underscore that the league is not enforcing this standard scrupulously. Further, a fine of only $200,000 (as was given to the Lions in 2003) does not seem to be enough to dissuade modern teams that have a maximum salary cap of $275 million. If the league were to choose to go this route, a penalty of one third-round pick (similar to the 2020 proposal to reward teams that developed minority talent with third-round compensatory picks) could be worthwhile to explore.

The league could also opt to go the other direction, recognizing that these controversies show that the Rooney Rule is not meeting its intended goal and choosing to eliminate the rule entirely—though this option is clearly less attractive. If the NFL chose to eliminate a diversity initiative, it would surely be met with blowback and require the league to explore other avenues for getting diverse candidates into meaningful team roles. The league could implement blind interviewing, allowing teams to select candidates based on their play calling schemes and philosophy rather than how they would look on the sideline. However, in a league built on relationships and full of unique styles, it may not be realistic to think the NFL could make coaching interviews anonymous for the sake of inclusion. With this in mind, the league may find it worthwhile to consider an education initiative, rewarding teams that “incubate” coaching candidates by teaching them in a given team’s system over a period of several years before promoting them (as New England did with Mayo). That said, the Mayo hire should not be without scrutiny, either—the goal is to elevate minority candidates, so avenues that allow teams to avoid a fair and rigorous hiring process seem to defeat the purpose, even if the end result is hiring a diverse candidate (as it was in that case).

The bottom line is this: regardless of whether the Patriots complied with the Rooney Rule by force or out of genuine interest, the controversy that surrounded their interviewing cycle shows that the NFL’s diversity rule is far from foolproof. While previous challenges, like that of Flores, have seemingly come up short, it appears that it is only a matter of time before an organizational misstep allows a legitimate Rooney Rule discrimination suit to reach the courts. The league has ways to avoid this outcome, potentially increasing penalties for the rule or eliminating it altogether, but one thing is clear—teams cannot continue to adhere to the Rooney Rule at the most barebones of levels, as the Patriots appeared to do here. The question remains: Will the NFL act proactively to adjust their diversity policies in their longstanding quest to increase and amplify the impact of minority candidates across the league, or will it take a well-timed legal challenge to finally spark meaningful change?