The NFL's Front Office and Coaching Accelerator Program is set to return this year after taking a one-year hiatus, just as the league promised a year ago. And there will be big changes.
CBS Sports has learned the NFL will amend the two-day program, which has been aimed at identifying and advancing minority talent across the league, to include non-minority participants when the program restarts in May.
The league has spent the past year looking to reimagine a program that can claim just one head coach and two general managers since its inception in 2022. It will now hold its new-look Accelerator Program on May 18, adding white male participants, while shrinking the total participant pool.
The program will now combine coach and GM candidates, and NFL senior vice president and chief diversity and inclusion officer Jonathan Beane expects about 40 total candidates with "really strong diverse representation," he told CBS Sports on Wednesday morning. It will no longer focus on candidates who are within five years of getting the top job and instead focus on those who the league views as being ready this upcoming cycle.
"The Accelerator still has the overriding goal of supporting the advancement of underrepresented football talent," Beane said. "We believe, though, and if you look at all of our programs, we have a framework of broadening access across the board where we're allowing availability for people of all demographics to participate in our programs. So this is not something that just relates to the Accelerator, but this is a philosophy and a way of operating and an evolution for us as a league.
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"There was a lot of discussion, got a lot of feedback. And when I spoke to GMs, head coaches, owners, participants, past participants, and I think there was an abundance of support for having a program that's inclusive of all talent."
The NFL is coming off another hiring cycle with poor results for diverse candidates. At his Super Bowl press conference, Roger Goodell said the league needs to ask the question "Why did we have the results this year?"
When the league had 10 head-coaching vacancies this past cycle, Robert Saleh (Titans) was the only non-white coach to land a job, becoming the fifth non-white head coach currently in the league. Aaron Glenn (Jets), Todd Bowles (Buccaneers) and DeMeco Ryans (Texans) are the only Black head coaches.
There are four minority general managers in the league today: Brad Holmes (Lions), Ryan Poles (Bears), Omar Khan (Steelers) and Ian Cunningham (Falcons). All three GMs who were fired this past cycle are Black.
It was a difficult year for the NFL in terms of diversity at its top club ranks, but Goodell said that he did not view the absence of the Accelerator Program as being related to those poor results.
"The Accelerator Program, first, as I mentioned before, we re-evaluate every program. We evaluate every process, policy," Goodell said. "That's from every time we implement something, and every year, frankly, to make sure: What do we do to improve it, and how does it help us address the challenges in front of us? So, do I think that had any impact on this hiring schedule? No, but I think long-term, it's something that we want to continue and figure out, how do we use that to make sure that people understand that the level of talent that's out there – the extraordinary talent that's out there – and how to give them the opportunities to continue their careers?
"And that goes for all the talent across the entire NFL, and people that are not in the NFL. I think that's what makes us great, is our people – whether it's on the field or whether it's off the field – and that's something why we're – to us and to me – committed to diversity."
'It's not a reaction to D.C.'
Goodell has repeatedly said the NFL values diversity, even in the face of DEI rollbacks across the country.
Last year the Trump administration made it a goal to eliminate all DEI practices from the government. A 2025 order from the president required department heads, among other actions, to "terminate, to the maximum extent allowed by law, all DEI, DEIA, and 'environmental justice' offices and positions (including but not limited to 'Chief Diversity Officer' positions); all 'equity action plans,' 'equity' actions, initiatives, or programs, 'equity-related' grants or contracts; and all DEI or DEIA performance requirements for employees, contractors, or grantees."
Beane said the addition of white male participants to the Accelerator Program has nothing to do with the Trump administration's efforts to dismantle DEI programs.
"This is not us taking the direction of anyone on the outside," Beane said.
"It's not a reaction to D.C. What this is, is this is an evolution of how we are committing on developing our people and wanting to be more inclusive in that approach, yet also still stay true to our overriding goals of ensuring that we're supporting underrepresented talent with their aspirations as well. Instead of either/or, we think we can achieve both."
Moving forward, this Accelerator will have about 40 participants total, with the hope that it will be split evenly between head coach and GM candidates. In addition to the two-day programming, there will be continued learning opportunities throughout the year, including each candidate being assigned a mentor and getting personalized executive coaching.
Beane and the NFL know this program change will not be met with unanimous applause.
"I don't think that we're going to have 100 percent agreement on the approach," Beane says. "But … I've spoken to a lot of the participants and just asking them ideally, as this moves forward, 'What do you think would be the right approach?' And we got a ton of support for us having a broader approach.
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"So what I believe is I think that there's going to be a lot of people, a majority of the people, that will be supportive. But then there'll be other people that, um, may have wished that we had stayed with our original approach with the Accelerator."
NFL programs like the annual Stanford executive leadership forum and the scouting combine accelerator have had blended participation for years, but the GM and coaching Accelerator had long been for minorities. Other league initiatives aimed at advancing and improving minority involvement have remained. For nearly a quarter-century the league has used the Rooney Rule, an instrument adopted by companies and industries across the nation, even as its usefulness may have reached its capacity.
The NFL even rewards teams that cultivate and develop minority talent who wind up leaving for a head-coach or primary football-executive job with two third-round draft picks, though that practice has come under scrutiny when an ostensible technicality led to Chicago not receiving picks for Cunningham taking the Falcons GM job this year.
But the league also remains embroiled in a racial discrimination lawsuit brought on by current Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores. Some of the proceedings from that lawsuit are headed to open court rather than private arbitration.
The nation's largest sports league continues to grapple with race, and this program change will not come without controversy.
How effective are these Accelerator Programs?
The six years of the Accelerator Programs boast a combined track record of 79 coaches and personnel members who have secured or been promoted to elevated roles over the years, but it does not account for those participants who had been identified as risers who were demoted or fired. In the end, three of the hundreds of participants have gotten top jobs:
- Ran Carthon was the first to get a top job, in 2023, but he was fired in Tennessee after two seasons as GM.
- Glenn is the only head coach to emerge from the program, and he joined the team that drafted him two decades earlier and now enters the 2026 season on perhaps the hottest seat in the NFL despite only one season under his belt for the Jets.
- And Cunningham, a past participant, got the Falcons GM job the year there was no Accelerator Program at all.
After two years of the NFL having zero Black offensive coordinators, Eric Bieniemy (Chiefs), Mike McDaniel (Chargers) and Nathan Scheelhaase (Rams) now hold those roles, though McDaniel was a head coach last season.
One path that the league identified to drive improvement was to get more Black coaches in the role of quarterbacks coach, as it presented the most expedient path to a head-coaching position with team owners looking for the next great offensive mind.
While gains were briefly made, the league now has just five minority quarterbacks coaches: New England's Ashton Grant, Baltimore's Israel Woolfork, Miami's Bush Hamdan, Chicago's J.T. Barrett and Washington's D.J. Williams.
But more concerning, if the path to a head-coaching job was thought to be first quarterbacks coach before offensive coordinator, that would be news to Black quarterbacks coaches who mentored NFL MVPs like Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen.
Tee Martin, a national championship winning quarterback at Tennessee, has been coaching for the past two decades since his playing career ended. He served as the Ravens quarterbacks coach the past three seasons, including the 2023 season when Jackson won his second MVP. Today, Martin does not have a job in the NFL.
Ronald Curry, a legendary Virginia high school player who played quarterback before switching to receiver in the NFL, started coaching in 2010. He was Buffalo's quarterbacks coach for two seasons, including the 2024 season when Allen won his NFL MVP over Jackson (still coached by Martin). Curry was not retained by Bills head coach Joe Brady and took a job as a receivers coach in Denver.
Martin and Curry were supposed to be on the path to upward career mobility as laid out by the league. Instead of being an offensive coordinator or head coach, neither is even in an NFL quarterbacks room today.
It reminded me of a quote by the great John Thompson when the legendary Georgetown coach spoke at a race town hall in 1998: "All we want is an opportunity to get out there and to try and a right to fail also. ... I'm sick of us having to be perfect to get the job."
When I reported the story last year that the program was taking a one-year break, I said "the timing stinks." Amazingly, this timing stinks even worse.
