It’s coming. Maybe at the end of the season or — if the Commanders feel generous and care about providing Rivera more free time to do his Black Friday shopping — by the end of this week. But if the ownership group listens to the shouts on social media and opinions from the press box and rushes to just end things already, leaving a spate of meaningless games on the lap of an in-house interim, it should give the greatest gift of all to offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy.
By overlooking him. Help a brotha out, and don’t make Bieniemy the interim head coach.
Let him keep calling the offensive plays. Give him space to keep molding second-year quarterback Sam Howell. Be grateful for his influence inside the building as the assistant head coach with an uncompromising intensity. But avoid the error of making him the NFL’s next Black interim head coach.
Please, don’t do that to him.
Although Bieniemy has long desired to run his own team, he shouldn’t be desperate enough to take on the unwinnable situation as an interim. And the new Commanders leadership — a group that consists of Magic Johnson, one of the few minorities with an NFL ownership stake — shouldn’t boost Bieniemy to a powerless position only to give the real job to someone else come January.
That would be a dubious and deceitful heel turn by the Commanders’ new billionaires. They’ve enjoyed a season full of high fives and glowing press for possessing the one quality people in this community care about: They’re not Daniel Snyder. But handing over a 4-8 team to a Black coach, and giving the appearance of progressive hiring practices, would be a quite Snyderian. And, mostly, unfair to Bieniemy.
He wants a chance to be a head coach, but this isn’t the right time or place. So it would be great if all those so-called advocates stop trying to force this job on him.
Around the same time as the Commanders’ season went sideways, support surged for Bieniemy. Allies, they’d probably call themselves. The people who believe they’re doing the nice thing by championing a Black man who’s been passed over for several head coaching jobs. Just give him a shot, they declare. Though their cheerleading might sound like cries for equality, they fail to see the interim job for what it truly has been for Black coaches: just a short layover on the mountaintop.
Last year, in The Post’s “Black Out” series, which analyzed more than three decades of NFL teams’ discriminatory history in hiring, the research found that from 1990 to 2023, Black men have made up just 12 percent of the opportunities to lead as full-time head coaches. White men have received 86 percent. But when a team starts to tumble and needs someone to clean up the mess, that’s the time NFL owners look for a Black savior.
Before this season, Black men disproportionately held 29 percent of the interim jobs. (Last month, the Las Vegas Raiders fired Josh McDaniels and named Antonio Pierce, who is Black, their interim coach.) Among those 15 Black interims, just three (Mike Singletary, Leslie Frazier and Romeo Crennel) were retained full-time. Last season, the trend continued with Steve Wilks, who took over as interim when Carolina Panthers fired its head coach after a 1-4 start.
The Carolina situation was not ripe for success, but Wilks still tidied things up and led the team to a 6-6 record the rest of the way. That should’ve boosted Wilks’ chances of becoming a full-time head coach again, but Panthers owner David Tepper didn’t reward him with the job. That honor instead went to Frank Reich, who’s leading the Panthers to the worst record in the league this season, at 1-9.
So even if the Commanders cut Rivera loose before the end of the season and promote Bieniemy, there’s no guarantee he’ll get the full-time gig, even if he excels. Also consider that the Commanders’ next five games include matchups against the Miami Dolphins and the San Francisco 49ers and a rematch against these Cowboys.
Another thing: Despite the good vibes from early in the season, the boo birds have returned to their nests around FedEx Field. The fan base is back to being frustrated with the product on the field, so how could anyone envision this as an optimal situation for a first-time head coach on a short clock?
Oh, and as far as the other coach with an expiration date: Defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio should be expecting one of those “he’s been relieved” press releases soon, too.
Under Del Rio’s watch this season, the Commanders have allowed more explosive plays than any other defense in the league, and they did so again and again to Dak Prescott and his Cowboys receivers. No one catching passes for Dallas needed a Thanksgiving dinner after all. They feasted enough on the Commanders.
Even on this holiday, a turkey gets carved up less than Washington’s secondary. So when Prescott dropped back on the sixth play of a second-quarter drive, you just knew he’d connect on that 31-yard dart to Brandin Cooks. In the fourth quarter, when Cowboys wide receiver CeeDee Lamb lined up to go one-on-one against corner Quan Martin, the expectation should’ve been an open look in the end zone. And even later, when Prescott again looked downfield, you almost felt pre-pity on Kam Curl, the Commanders’ safety whom Cowboys’ KaVontae Turpin burned for a 34-yard touchdown.
For the seventh time this season, the Commanders coughed up 30 points or more to an opponent. Certainly the defense’s weaknesses belong to Del Rio. But it’s a far greater indictment of Rivera, who handpicked the coach and those players.
Rivera offered a national audience a comprehensive list of his team’s shortcomings. The Commanders didn’t just buckle defensively; the offense couldn’t pick up a must-have conversion while trailing 20-10 in the third quarter. On third and one from the Dallas 39-yard line, Howell tried going deep to wide receiver Terry McLaurin, who could not hold on to the ball while under duress from Cowboys cornerback Stephon Gilmore.
Then, on fourth down, running back Brian Robinson Jr. was repelled two yards, giving possession back to the Cowboys. Things didn’t get better from there, with Howell throwing a pick-six and Prescott chowing down on a hideously large turkey leg — with more than five minutes still remaining in the game.
So, that press release on Rivera — it’s coming. It’s expected, and now let’s hope Washington doesn’t send out another statement announcing Bieniemy as the interim.
What might look like something disguised as progress could actually be a step backward. Giving Bieniemy a chance now, and tasking him to keep the locker room together, could be at the expense of his career record falling under .500 before he gets a real opportunity. This wouldn’t be Bieniemy’s big shot, but rather his trap door.
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