The NFL's LinkedIn season

I don't know when everyone started breathlessly reporting about every interview for a coach or front-office job, but I would like it to stop

I don’t know exactly when this particular media trend started, but I’m pretty confident that this NFL offseason is when it officially went too far.

It is the coach-interview report. More specifically, it is the whole genre of news reporting that has bloomed out of the period during which NFL teams hire new people for coaching and front-office roles. This stuff used to be pretty limited. Reporters might produce a piece that suggested Team X had a few candidates on their list, and names might be included, but everyone was fine with the fact that ultimately no one really cared until a hiring was made.

Somewhere along the way — and again, I’m not entirely sure when this changed, but it seems recent — people started formally reporting every detail of the hiring process. Your various NFL insiders began saying that the Houston Texas had requested an interview with San Francisco defensive coordinator Demeco Ryans. Then they would report that he had completed an interview. And, eventually, that he was hired. That the insiders received traction on these reports — engagements on their social-media posts, inclusion on TV news tickers, banter on sports-chat shows — only encouraged more of it, to the point where teams are now disclosing all of this stuff themselves. The Chicago Bears announced on Wednesday that they have completed an interview with head coach candidate Mike McCarthy. (Who was the coach of the Dallas Cowboys until Monday-ish.)

And, honestly, who gives an actual shit? In almost every case with a major NFL job opening, teams will interview multiple candidates. They will usually even interview a broad variety of candidates — previous head coach, experienced assistant coach, hotshot college coach, famous ex-player — so it’s not like anything of value can be gleaned from the list of interviewees. They are talking to some guys. That’s it. Eventually they will pick one.

But we have somehow managed to collectively pretend that the interview process is itself important. We now get reports on who teams hope to interview, the dates the interviews will take place, and then the fact that the already-reported interview has, in fact, taken place. Great. Thanks for that.

And, look, I get it: the news beast must be fed. Social media has made it easy enough for reporters with inside knowledge to shoot it forth into the public realm without much effort or context required, and so they are doing that. Fans are eager enough to learn every bit of detail about their teams that they consume these reports, even if they amount to “we had a Zoom with a guy.” But is any actual useful information being disseminated here? When the New York Giants announced that they were retaining GM Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll, that was news. That sets the course for the team for the rest of the offseason and into next season. The New York Jets, on the other hand, have made a whole industry out of making-some-calls season. They seem to be trying to set some sort of record for the number of people they are openly interviewing for their coach and GM roles. They are up to 21 — 13 for GM, eight for head coach — with, presumably, more to come. Not only are the Jets putting this out through the usual media insiders, they are documenting it themselves through in-house reporters, making sure that everyone knows who they interviewed and on what date.

My favourite among all of these Jets disclosures is the announcement that they interviewed interim head coach Jeff Ulbrich for the head-coach role. He took a team that was 2-3 when it fired former coach Robert Saleh and steered it to a 3-9 record under his watch. It cannot be possible that this has earned him the full-time job. It’s like hiring an apprentice chef, and he gives the entire restaurant food poisoning during his first week. The job is yours! I can appreciate that the Jets wanted to extend the courtesy of an interview to the man who literally has been doing the job for three months, but was this something that really needed to be announced? Would there be a single Jets fan who was concerned that they weren’t giving Jeff Ulbrich proper consideration? (Not counting members of the Ulbrich family.)

I know I’m veering into old-man-yells-at-cloud territory here, but who is any of this for? One of the most basic functions of the media is to consider whether any particular bit of information is worth publishing. Does this matter? Will anyone learn anything useful from it? I will submit to you that “Pete Carroll plans to interview with the Bears on Saturday” does not pass that test.

Agents leak their clients’ names to reporters to make them look more in-demand, sure. Teams, I guess, see some value in being transparent about their search process, although what that value might be is a mystery. I’ll allow that there are times when some of this stuff is newsy. Deion Sanders talking to the Cowboys? That’s notable for a bunch of reasons, especially to the football players who have agreed to join his University of Colorado team.

But most of it is just filler. Plain old ballast. Just because some level of detail is known does not mean it needs to be shared. I fear for where this all ends. “Brian Flores completed an interview with the Jaguars on Friday. He was wearing khaki pants and a three-quarter zip pullover with a black golf shirt. He had coffee, black. And a scone.”