He must be a terrible interviewer. It seems like he interviews a lot but then never makes it to the second level.
The other problem is he’s the OC of a team where Andy Reid is the play-caller. Everyone is wondering how much he actually contributes.
My theory is that Matt Nagy ruined it for him. People saw how bad he was with the Bears and figured all the Andy Reid magic must be with Reid himself, not his assistants.
Mahomes got crushed in the SB against Tampa Bay because he had so little protection. In yesterday’s game he wasn’t sacked at all and was barely pressured, especially in the second half, and led his team to a comeback win. So, is Mahomes not very good, but just dependent on his O-line?
The truth is always somewhere in-between. You can’t give Eric all the blame in Chicago but can’t give all the credit to Reid in Kansas City either.
If anything it suggests he might be great with the right people around him, which is true of any successful coach.
Andy Reid isn’t an idiot and wouldn’t put up with an OC who didn’t contribute.
Of course not. But perceptions persist, and one former Reid assistant who floundered on his own may cast a doubt on the next guy.
Another limiting factor for Bienemy is that he’s never available until late in the playoffs or after the Super Bowl. Although that didn’t stop the Colts from hiring Eagles offensive coordinator Shane Steichen yesterday.
Which brings us to another reason – Bienemy’s Black. Yes, there are now a few Black head coaches, but if I’m not mistaken they generally come from a defensive background. Prejudices die hard, and just as Black QBs are significantly underrepresented, there may be a bias against Black OCs. Ridiculous, of course, but when you still have people questioning whether Lamar Jackson is a “true” QB it’s not surprising.
Byron Leftwich might be in the same boat.
He got several interviews this years but no takers or even significant interest beyond interview requests. Of course, he doesn’t have the same pedigree as Bienemy, which may play a part.
And he actually got fired this year after the Bucs’ offense underperformed, even with Brady at QB.
Cardinals hire Eagles DC Jonathan Gannon as their new head coach.
Boy, Philadelphia’s coaching staff is really taking a beating here. Surely both Gannon and Steichen will take a bunch of assistants with them. Sirianni might have to replace a huge amount of staff.
He was objectively terrible. He also jumped the line pretty aggressively when he was promoted.
I know everything is racism, doubley so in the NFL, but I’m thinking it’s most likely that Bieniemy is just a terrible interview. When you’re basically holding the clipboard for one of the best offensive minds the NFL has ever seen, you really need to bring a vision and articulate very clearly a plan that’s more nuanced than “draft Pat Mahomes”. NFL owners might be stuck in Jim Crow, but I don’t think most GMs really are sabotaging their own careers by passing over elite black HC and OC candidates.
Bieniemy seems to be potentially of the mind that he needs to get out of Reid’s shadow to finally get taken seriously as an HC candidate. The Chiefs brought back Nagy and their offense got better without Tyreek Hill, so that further muddies the waters with how much credit Bieniemy should get.
Another take on Bienemy:
It involves a kind of pretzel logic that might actually be true:
… with so many people in the media advocating for Bieniemy to get a chance to be a coach and suggesting that the failure to do so traces to the NFL’s woeful hiring record when it comes to diversity, some owners may fear that hiring Bieniemy would prompt a very vocal 30 percent of the fan base to suggest that the team has surrendered to the “woke mob,” in lieu of hiring the best person for the job.
IOW, we don’t want people the assholes to think we’re trying to not be racist, so we’ll be racist.
(Of course, that doesn’t explain how other Black coordinators get head coaching gigs.)
Looks like Bienemny might be in as the Commanders OC. And they do have a head choice on an incredibly hot seat right now.
Eric Bieniemy does a lot more than just hold a clipboard for Andy Reid. It’s rather demeaning to say the least.
Yahoo is saying it’s official with the Commanders.
Obviously there’s more that goes into an OC’s job, but calling the plays during the game is kind of the big ticket item.
Then again, now that I think about it, maybe designing plays is the real big ticket item, with actually calling them being more akin to doing busywork.
I hear a lot of his value is on the practice field and in game preparation. Has a near-obsessive attention to detail, does not let the team move on until they have mastered a single play, that kind of stuff. Something that’s likely been missing from Washington practices for a long time.
Now they have their OC, supposedly have their QB in Sam Howell (11 career completions 
), and legit good receivers and running backs, so I will be very disappointed if they do not focus much of their offseason acquisitions on the offensive line, at least on that side of the ball.
A point I saw brought up - Nick Sirianni didn’t call plays either as an OC when he got hired by the Eagles. Neither did Doug Pederson who also held that position under Reid. But apparently it’s an issue now that it’s somebody who’s won a couple SB rings as an OC over the last few years?
I guess there’s the “interviews poorly” thing going around, but taking a look at some of the coaches hired (and subsequently very quickly fired) over the last few years, if that’s the case, you have to conclude the teams themselves rate interviews and their own skills at conducting them too highly. Last thing I need as a fan is somebody good at fluffing the egos of owners or GMs. Considering some of the coaching hires the last several years, it does seem like GMs are sabotaging their own careers. I’ve been on both sides of interviews, and it’s incredibly how much ego comes into it on both sides. With some interviewers, it really is more about them than finding good talent.
The Raiders have fired first-year defensive line coach Frank Okam. No word yet on a replacement.
Interesting. The SI article you link to notes the Raiders’ poor defensive line play, which would certainly provide probable cause for firing your DL coach; waiting six weeks after the end of your season to do so feels odd, and suggests to me that there is also some other unspoken issue going on (or maybe there’s an assistant coach from one of the Super Bowl teams that they’ve been eager to pursue).
Then again, it’s the Raiders, which are often kind of inscrutable.
It would have been weirder if there had been a round of firings back in January and then this one comes out of the blue a month later. But the Raiders didn’t make any changes that I saw, which would make this the first public firing of a coach.
Occam’s Razor might suggest that this is simply a case of the Raiders taking a break following their elimination, and then coming back into the office and finally completing their end-of-year self-scouting. Now that “all the facts are in” they know where they have liabilities, and this guy might have been the burr in the saddle.
It could also be something as innocuous as the coach being on a 1-year contract which was signed 365 days ago. The “firing” was announced today simply because they didn’t renew the contract and they did the coach a solid by letting him stay on payroll/insurance through the end of it instead of canning him immediately after week 18. This does sound like the kind of thing Davis would do.
Or you know, there could be an unreported DUI we haven’t heard about. Maybe he pissed in McDaniels’ morning smoothie. It’s the Raiders and it’s Las Vegas and it’s Josh McDaniels…the possibilities are endless.
Interesting observation there, and it lines up with information in Okam’s Wikipedia entry, which says that the Raiders hired him on February 17th, 2022, and fired him on February 19th, 2023.