At Super Bowl, Black assistant coaches still optimistic despite ‘blackout’

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — As the final moments ticked off from the Seattle Seahawks’ Super Bowl victory Sunday evening, Frisman Jackson found himself reflecting on the amazing journey that took him from the Ida B. Wells Housing projects on Chicago’s South Side to an NFL playing career, a gaggle of coaching stops and now this: a Super Bowl championship.

But while most people would say this coaching journey was unlikely, Jackson, the Seahawks’ 46-year-old wide receivers coach, said that in retrospect he was not surprised that his journey led him to the Seahawks’ 29-13 win against the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LX.

“Probably not with a specific team, but I would have believed at some point I would be sitting here in this chair, absolutely,” he said.

Every Super Bowl has myriad storylines. For me, the major storyline of this Super Bowl was framed last week when no African American coaches were selected to fill a record 10 head coaching vacancies.

While the prowess of Black athletes has long been celebrated — as it was on Sunday when Seahawks running back Kenneth Murray III was voted Super Bowl MVP — the ability of African Americans to perform as head coaches and executives in the league has not been as widely embraced. In fact, it has often been stubbornly resisted through a confluence of nepotism, connections of which they are not a part and a habit of choosing a white candidate when all else is even.

Despite the recent “blackout,” the army of Black assistant coaches I spoke to this week — from the Seahawks’ 62-year-old Leslie Frazier to the Patriots 30-year-old quarterback coach Ashton Grant — remain optimistic about the future.

I asked Jackson why he was so optimistic that coaching would be his career lifeline. Earlier in the week, Jonathan Kraft, president of the New England Patriots, said he felt the difference between young African American and white assistants was that the fathers of white assistant coaches were often high school football coaches and that was not the case for many African Americans.

As Jackson savored his championship moment on Sunday, he said that he was guided into coaching through his life.

“I grew up in a single-family household in Chicago, and everybody that was important in my life were coaches,” he said. “My high school coach, my college coaches, my NFL coach. They were all influential to my growth and development.”

Jackson played in the NFL from 2002 to 2007.

“When I got done playing, it was actually my wife who pushed me towards [coaching],” Jackson said. “She said, ‘All the people who have been important to you in your life have been coaches. That’s an opportunity for you to be able to go back and do the same thing.’ So, that’s what kind of steered me towards getting into coaching.”

Jackson began his college career as a quarterback at Northern Illinois, then finished at Western Illinois. He was not drafted, but he played with the New York Jets and Cleveland Browns. He thought about coaching when he was with the Browns.

“I had an inkling that I wanted to coach, but I really didn’t want to dive into it yet. Obviously, I’m still trying to play [then],” Jackson recalled.

He eventually did an internship with NFL Europe, which had a training camp in Tampa, Florida, and he would coach during training camp.

“That’s when I got the itch,” Jackson said.

But his position coach told him, ‘You better worry about making this team. You over here trying to coach thinking about life after football. You better worry about football now.’ ”

Jackson coached at Western Illinois, Akron, Northern Illinois, North Carolina State and Temple before moving to the NFL with the Tennessee Titans in 2017. There was a stop at Baylor, then the Carolina Panthers, Pittsburgh Steelers and finally the Seahawks in 2024.

When I asked Jackson if he’d ever thought about pursuing a head coaching job at an HBCU, he said he felt that his head coaching window was all but closed.

“I’ll be quite frank with you, and I hate saying this because it’s going to sound so bad when I say this, but I’m a receivers coach,” Jackson said. “I fought the fight. It’s not like I’m content with being a wideout coach. Sometimes you just get tired. You’re just like, ‘Man, I fought the fight. I’m tired of chasing.’

“Now I’m like, ‘You know what? I just want to be the best receiver coach I can possibly be.’ Coach my guys up, and when I’m done coaching, hopefully at 60 years old I can walk away and say if all I was was a wide receiver coach in the NFL, I lived a pretty doggone good life. And I affected a bunch of dudes that come from similar backgrounds as me.”

Jackson said he was discouraged about the recent “blackout” when no African American head coaches were hired, but he was not discouraged for himself.

“It affects my optimism for the younger guys,” Jackson said. “I’m like, ‘This is business as usual, nothing new.’

“It could be zero this year, and then next year it could be six, and so I hold out hope that it’ll level itself out. That’s all I’m doing. I’m hoping. I’m holding out hope that it’ll level itself out for the guys that’s younger than me. Sometimes you mentor guys. I was talking to Coach [Leslie] Frazier and it’s been a bunch of guys that I’ve mentored and I showed them how to coach — this is how you do this, how you coach this, how you do things.

“This is how you rise, you grind, and you get your work in, and you get opportunities in this profession. And then you see them like, ‘Oh shoot, I raised that dude. He’s a head coach now; he’s a coordinator now. I’m still coaching wideouts. I guess it’s meant for me to be the wideouts coach.’ So, I’ve taken that approach.”

Jackson said he is not content.

“That’s a terrible word. I’m not that at all,” he said. “I’m not sitting on my hands saying I’m not going to keep working to better myself or keep preparing myself for an opportunity that may come.

“That’s far from it. I’m prepared for the opportunity, but if it comes, it comes. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. I’m not going to let it affect my day-to-day work, how I go about my business, and how I affect the guys that I’m coaching.”

On the other hand, the Seahawks’ Super Bowl victory and the success of All-Pro receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba is a feather in his cap, one that could accelerate whatever aspirations he has to keep climbing the coaching ladder.

His climbing days may not be over, but they are measured.

“Obviously I think about, ‘Hey, man, this could possibly help me for the future,’ but I don’t want to live a life where every move I’m making is calculated,” he said. “I want to live life and react to how life plays itself out in front of me. I don’t want to be sitting around like, ‘I don’t want to talk like this, I don’t want to say this because it might affect me in the long run, if I want to be a head coach.’

“If I’ve got to live like that, that isn’t worth living.”

Unlike Jackson, Justin Hinds, the Seattle Seahawks’ defensive line coach, did not see himself in a Super Bowl setting and can’t believe he reached the championship stage.

Hinds didn’t even think he would be a football coach.

“I thought my life was going in a different direction, to be honest,” he said. “I thought I was going to be an accountant.”

Also, unlike Jackson, Hinds is very much in the coaching climb.

“You get done playing, you don’t get a chance to play in the NFL, and you get to coaching and teaching and realize what your gift is,” Hinds said. “And then you just get to this point and you’re like, ‘Wow.’”

The moment hit him after the Seahawks defeated the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC Championship Game and Hinds realized he was going to the Super Bowl.

“I just said, ‘Man, from where I started?’ I did not think that this was in the works. I’ve had a lot of great opportunities, but not necessarily as much on-field success. So, I’m happy to have that. I’m truly grateful for the moment.”

On Sunday, Hinds saw his defensive line unit turn in a dominating performance as it harassed Patriots quarterback Drake Maye, who was sacked six times, threw two interceptions and fumbled.

Hinds attended Rowan University, where he became a two-time All-New Jersey Athletic Conference defensive lineman in a four-year career. He was a graduate assistant at Mississippi State, Florida and Valdosta State. He became the defensive coordinator at Western Carolina University.

“I’m just trying to win the playoff game. I’m just trying to get to the playoffs. And then the opportunity comes for me to go to Chicago, and I’m like, ‘Whoa.’ ”

Hinds was the defensive line coach at Valdosta State when James Rowe was the defensive coordinator. Rowe became the cornerbacks coach with the Chicago Bears in 2022 and told Hinds that the Bears were looking for a young coach to be an assistant defensive line coach.

Hinds interviewed, thinking nothing would come of it. Then one morning he got a call from the Bears saying he had the job.

“That’s how quickly your life can change,” he said.

I asked Hinds how much attention he paid to the NFL recent hiring cycle in which no Black coaches were hired and if he was dispirited.

“Yes, obviously in the climate that we’re in, you pay attention,” Hinds said. “It doesn’t break my spirit. It just means, what do I have to do to be able to get through this point to maybe be the one coach? How do you become a Raheem Morris? How to you become Todd Bowles? How to you become a Mike Tomlin, a Les Frazier? How do you get to those points?”

The NFL season is over, a new champion has been crowned, but those questions continued to haunt a league that continues to wrestle with diversity.

The post At Super Bowl, Black assistant coaches still optimistic despite ‘blackout’ appeared first on Andscape.