The NFL is quietly ending the mandate requiring all 32 teams to hire a minority offensive assistant before the 2025 season kicks off. While there’s been a lot of noise lately out of Florida—with Attorney General James Uthmeier hitting the league with a subpoena over its hiring policies—league officials say the decision to phase out the requirement actually happened months ago.

This specific rule started back in 2022, right after Brian Flores filed his massive lawsuit against the league. The idea was simple: get more diverse voices into the offensive meeting rooms where future head coaches are usually made. To sweeten the deal, the NFL even picked up half of those assistants' salaries.

But according to Jonathan Beane, the NFL’s senior VP for league leadership and inclusion, that setup was never meant to last forever. He says the league isn't "ending" the program’s spirit, but they’ve stopped making it a requirement and stopped the reimbursements. The league’s stance now is that teams should just know this is the right way to do business.

Art Rooney II, the Pittsburgh Steelers owner who heads up the league’s diversity committee, kept it real when talking about how well it worked. He mentioned that while every team technically followed the rules, the experience wasn't the same everywhere. Some guys were right in the thick of things in the QB room, while others were given different roles that didn't always put them on that fast track to becoming a coordinator.

We’ve seen it work out big time for some, though. Look at Nate Scheelhaase—he got his foot in the door with the Los Angeles Rams through this program, worked his way up to offensive coordinator, and just spent this past offseason taking five different head coaching interviews.

On the flip side, coaches like Kenneth Black, who is now the offensive coordinator at South Carolina State, say the program was huge for networking. He noted that in a league where who you know is often just as important as what you know, the mandate forced doors open that might otherwise have stayed shut. With the mandate gone, the big question now is whether teams will keep opening those doors on their own.