The 2025 NFL season is officially over. The names of Matthew Stafford, the regular season Most Valuable Player and Kenneth Walker III, his Super Bowl counterpart, may echo loudest among the fans.
But the real, largely untold but necessary narrative of the season just past and the likely story of the next season is embodied in five names.
The monikers of Todd Bowles, Aaron Glenn and DeMeco Ryans, as well as Eric Bienemy andMike McDaniel are the ones that should resonate around the 32-team league.
The first three, Bowles, Glenn and Ryans, are the only three Black head coaches in the league. There were five Black head coaches at the start of the season and seven as recently as two years ago.
But the firing of the aforementioned McDaniel from Miami and the resignation of Mike Tomlin after 19 years with the Steelers, leaves the NFL, a league where 70 percent of the players are African-Americans with Black men holding just nine percent of its coaching posts.
