And even today, the racial composition of NFL lineups is shaped as much by societal factors as the inclination of decision-makers to stick with what has worked so well for so long.
In the past few decades, critics have decried the way black players historically were blocked from playing quarterback in the NFL — an insulting and economically disenfranchising move. However, statistics show that times are changing — albeit still way too slowly.
Warren Moon could write a book on it. Actually, he did. Most black players of his generation — and definitely those who came before Moon — could tell similar disheartening stories.
Repeatedly pushed to move to another position by coaches who assumed he lacked the smarts to play the most important one in sports, Moon, believing he had the chops to lead, well, never gave up.
If you played those positions in college and you got drafted, you knew you were probably going to get moved in the NFL. At every position, for African-Americans, conquering that myth at quarterback was so important. Credit Doug Williams for much of the breakthrough. Despite a nearly split along the offensive line, at center more than 81 percent of the players are white. Conversely, cornerback is the blackest position on the field: On defense overall, roughly 80 percent of the players are black.
Switching back to offense, among running backs, the numbers are also heavily tilted toward blacks. Why are those specialists overwhelmingly white? NFL insiders and observers such as former offensive lineman and football historian Michael Oriard note that many are converted soccer players, and in the United States that is a game played in the suburbs. Which, of course, explains why McCaffrey has joked about being mistaken for a kicker.
Most of the guys at those positions look like McCaffrey. His father Ed can relate. For 13 seasons in the NFL, the elder McCaffrey excelled at wide receiver , another position at which few white players line up, let alone become franchise greats.
His son enters the NFL at a time when white ballcarriers are even harder to find than competent passers of any race. In the past 31 years, only two white running backs rushed for at least 1, yards in a season: Craig James and Peyton Hillis McCaffrey hopes to end the drought. Then McCaffrey punctuated his amateur performance with an eye-opening display of speed and agility at the combine.
McCaffrey possesses versatility that any offensive coordinator worth his salt would want to use. Since the s, no one has been more active at the intersections of race, sports and politics than Edwards, who advises the San Francisco 49ers. The success of legendary black running backs such as Hall of Famer Jim Brown, Edwards said, has provided a draft model that NFL teams eagerly follow year after year after year. If somebody is having success with a corner covering a particular type of wide receiver, everyone wants that same type of corner.
This is why it gets to be so difficult to shatter tradition. W hat football has, explained best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell, is a sorting problem. The author of Outliers: The Story of Success and The Tipping Point , Gladwell, widely praised for his innovative approach to sociology, offers an analogy that might help to make sense of what is happening on a football field.
With few exceptions, American presidents have been white men, in late middle age and taller than 5-feet We do a category selection before we do individual analysis. Calvin Johnson, who is black, fits the bill for a deep receiver, and maybe Wes Welker, who is white, in the slot. When we make comparisons between people, race tends to be one of the factors that correlates. Five of the 32 quarterbacks projected to start in are black.
Overt discrimination no longer is a major factor in determining which players are drafted at certain positions. For NFL owners, green, generally, is the color that matters most.
By the late s, though, the game was changing. With teams putting a greater emphasis on speed out of the backfield, white running backs faded into the background. The perception was that white tailbacks in college, generally speaking, lacked the speed and athleticism of black runners.
Gladwell explained that although we tend to think in categories, occasionally an exceptional individual comes along who completely changes the selection process. In , that person was Jesse Owens. When Adolf Hitler hosted the summer Olympics that year, the prevailing ideas about race and sports were very different.
With one exception: Jews were barred from the German Olympic team. Hitler hoped to use the games to showcase the very particular men and women he saw as the height of intellect and athleticism. In America, the enslavement of black people had ended, but many vestiges of that heinous system still remained with segregation. The first time they took the test by itself. Later, they completed a questionnaire before the test. One of the questions asked the students to identify their race. Were the students influenced by negative stereotypes of black scholarship?
Just like I have with black athletes at those positions also. It really depends on the person more than anything. Rex Chapman and Brent Barry could jump out of gyms but didn't have many posters made of them. Peyton Hillis played fullback at the University of Arkansas. Despite playing behind and blocking for two NFL first rounders, Hillis had a remarkable career at Arkansas. For his efforts, he wasn't taken until the seventh round of the NFL Draft. Hillis did well in and led the team in rushing.
What happened in ? He got no love at all and was traded at the end of the season. In , Peyton surprised everyone by rushing for over 1, yards and 11 touchdowns. It just depends on the player. If some more suburban areas were recruited as hard as the inner city areas you might find more.
Maybe the good white athletes are just playing other sports or other positions. Yankees outfielder Brett Gardner can flat out fly. Jim Edmonds from a few years ago and Jacoby Ellsbury are also exceptional athletes that one could see on a football field.
Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey, who both have good speed and change of direction, could help revive the extinct positions as well. What about the white wide receivers? How many corners truly play at a dominant level in the NFL? Tucker said this as he sat watching tape of DBs. This has nothing to do with white or black.
Fox laughed at the joke, but by the time his four-year career reached its last stop, in Buffalo, it was slightly less funny. I made plays at Ohio State. Started [37] college games. I vertical-jumped 40 inches. The NFL was great. But I always felt like I never got a fair shake playing the position because I was white.
In the Giants moved Sehorn back to safety the moment they drafted him. He recalls the first time he lined up opposite Michael Irvin. Ittersagen played two snaps at corner for the Titans in thanks to a series of injuries at the position and, more specifically, to a winding yard interception return by Jason McCourty that was negated by a penalty and which forced McCourty, the exhausted starter, to pat his helmet and let Ittersagen pinch-hit for two plays. Today Peterson is the outside linebackers coach at Texas State, his childhood dream of becoming the next Sehorn having ended with a gruesome elbow and shoulder injury his sophomore year.
Cioffi had earned his way into that coveted corner spot after a stellar high school career in Springfield, N. In the spirit of Italian sprinter Piettro Mennea, who in broke the world record by running it in On second-and-short, Drew Brees tried to dump a pass to a running back out in the flat, but the former Penn State walk-on intercepted Brees with nothing but green turf in front of him.
Forget getting snaps. Just get a practice rep. Just make the team! Lisowski was a committed corner. He still remembers arriving for work on Aug. Eighteen months and zero calls later, as Lisowski watched Sherman and fellow corner Walter Thurmond leave Super Bowl XLVIII with injuries, he was surprised to feel the same butterflies behind his ribs that he used to feel when he was about to run onto the field.
He thought he had gotten over it. Pending that, the status quo holds. Mueller, the bleached Richard Sherman clone, married a Stanford track star with whom he plans to start a family, so one might imagine that he has thought about siring the next Sehorn. Sherman has made playing corner cool again, the way Deion Sanders did after his selection by the Falcons in the draft pushed white cornerback Scott Case to safety for the remainder of his Atlanta career.
The former Browns star seems to have sent a lot of texts on Thursday, ranging from Taylor Swift's Red album release to the iconic Wicked Witch of the East debate.
D'Ernest Johnson has a great opportunity to flex his skills with the Browns' depleted at running back. Tua's injury bout continues as he recovers from a fractured middle finger, but remains active. Pat Freiermuth has skyrocketed from high-potential rookie to TE1 in these Week 10 rankings. Hunter Renfrow climbs into the top as the Raiders regroup at the wide receiver position. Christian McCaffrey is healthy and playing, but he isn't the top-ranked RB this week! Home NFL.
SI Recommends. By AP News. By Madeline Coleman. College Basketball.
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