Dallas Cowboys offensive coordinator Klayton Adams is going to be a part of the NFL’s recently revamped Accelerator program when the league’s owner meetings convenes on Monday. The Accelerator program is meant to identify a group of 34 up and coming candidates for head coach and general manager opportunities, grouping them with the league’s owners in a series of preparation events and networking opportunities.
Adams, the Cowboys soon-to-be second-year offensive coordinator is among a selection of 16 potential head coaching candidates, including former Dallas DL coach and current Seattle Seahawks defensive coordinator, Aden Durde. That group also includes Mike McDaniel, the recently fired Miami Dolphins head coach. 18 other participants are part of the potential GM group, but the selections are not without a bit of controversy.
Cowboys tight ends coach Lunda Wells participated the last time the program ran, in 2024.
The Accelerator program was paused during the 2025 season, but returns with an altered mission. When first introduced in 2022, the event was meant to be a step to further the league’s lagging diversity efforts to get more minority and women candidates in front of the league’s owners to help bridge the gap between decision makers and those who may not be receiving fair consideration for league openings.
Now, the league has opened inclusion efforts up to a much broader pool of candidates, while shrinking the number of participants. Prior years saw upwards of 60 attendees. Because of the reduction and the changing of the criteria, the number of Black potential head coach candidates involved in the program is down to eight. From USA Today’s Jarrett Bell:
It appears there will be a 60/40 split of diverse/non-diverse participants this time around for the new Accelerator program, which typically involves lectures, strategy, workshops and networking opportunities.
Organizers have scrapped the part of the program that resembled “speed-dating” and matched NFL owners and participants in quick meet-and-greet moments. Good move.
It flows with an aim for more quality time to network with NFL owners, some of whom are expected to engage in breakfast and lunch sessions on Tuesday. Networking can be so critical because “comfort level” is undoubtedly viewed as a key factor for decision-makers in making a hire.
The NFL has an interesting history when it comes to integration. It was the first major pro sport to be integrated, having Black players alongside white teammates in the 1920s and early 1930s. They then banned Black (the “B” is capitalized for the same grammatical rules as the “I” in Irish and Italian are) players from 1934 through 1945. Still, they reintegrated before Jackie Robinson officially broke the color barrier in, at the time, the country’s most popular sport of baseball, as Kenny Washington and Woody Strode suited up for the Los Angeles Rams in Fall 1946.
Robinson, who signed his contract with the Dodgers organization in Fall 1945, wouldn’t play for Brooklyn until the 1947 season.
Eight decades later, the NFL’s player demographics sits around 70% Black, and even the resistance Black players had routinely met manning the game’s most important (and well-paid) position of quarterback has mostly melted away. 16 of the 32 projected starting quarterbacks in 2026 (picking Kyler Murray over JJ McCarthy in Minnesota) are Black.
Perhaps the last bastion of the backwards thinking was when Colts executive Bill Polian erroneously dismissed the chances of 2018 draft prospect Lamar Jackson to succeed at the pro level as a QB. Despite Jackson being prepared for the next level, winning the Heisman Trophy in a pro style offense at Louisville under Bobby Petrino, Polian claimed the electric Jackson would be better off moving to receiver.
Jackson has since won two MVP awards for the Baltimore Ravens and finished second in another campaign in just eight seasons in the league.
But even with all of those inroads on the playing field, the league has had to continue to make concerted efforts when it comes to the premium jobs of head coach and general manager. That’s led the NFL to embrace tactics such as the Rooney Rule, currently being challenged in a Florida case, where each team is mandated to interview at least one minority candidate for major open positions. In recent years, the league has adopted a compensatory pick bonus to teams who have minority candidates hired elsewhere for the positions of HC or GM.
The thinking is this incentivizes teams to not overlook minority candidates for offensive and defensive coordinator roles, and assistant GM titles, seen as the primary stepping-stone roles.
Given the track record of NFL teams while hiring for the most powerful and visible coaching jobs, there’s an obvious need for the league to address what has historically been an uneven playing field in the hiring process. Too often, Black candidates with deeper resumes – including some with Super Bowl credentials – have been passed over for the top jobs that went to others.
This article originally appeared on Cowboys Wire: Top Cowboys assistant to partake in controversial revamp of NFL program
Reporting by K.D. Drummond, Cowboys Wire / Cowboys Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
