Bears assistant Jennifer King was a successful basketball coach but couldn't pass up NFL opportunity

Jennifer King was a champion women’s basketball coach when she made a tough decision to pursue a career in football.

She hasn’t had to look back.

Within three years of switching sports, King became the first Black female full-time coach in the NFL when Washington hired her in 2021 as an assistant running backs coach. She spent three seasons with the Commanders before joining Matt Eberflus’ staff with the Chicago Bears this year as an offensive assistant, focusing on running backs.

King is one of 15 women who are full-time coaches in the NFL this season, a new league record and most for any male professional sports league in the world.

King’s journey began in 2018 when she met then-Panthers coach Ron Rivera at the NFL’s Women’s Forum, an annual event that connects participants with owners, general managers, head coaches and club executives.

King had just led Johnson & Wales University-Charlotte to the United States Collegiate Athletic Association Division II title. But football was first in her heart. She played quarterback and safety on a women’s tackle football team and wanted an opportunity in coaching.

"I always liked football more,” King said. “But it was hard to leave basketball. We had won a championship. I was national coach of the year. Like, things were going really well for me. And to just leave was difficult, but I just felt it was something that I couldn’t pass up.”

King’s basketball team practiced close enough to the Panthers’ training facility that she could hear and watch them. When she met Rivera, he already knew who she was from her basketball pedigree. Rivera’s wife, Stephanie, was an assistant coach in the WNBA and she told him a woman who plays the game would do well in coaching.

“He invited me over for rookie minicamp,” King said. “I thought I’d be there for two days, but it turned into about four months.”

King spent the summer of 2018 as a coaching intern for the Panthers, working with wide receivers. She moved on to join Rick Neuheisel’s staff as an assistant wide receivers coach and special teams coach for Arizona in the short-lived Alliance of American Football.

King returned to Carolina to serve as a running backs coaching intern in 2019 and joined Dartmouth’s staff as an offensive assistant that fall.

When Rivera became the head coach in Washington in 2020, King again joined his staff as a coaching intern. He gave her a full-time job the following year.

“She had a drive about her that just really said she wanted to do this, and she also played the game,” Rivera said. “She talked about the little things that she learned in playing, showing how aware she is about the game. So I just thought that she had this desire, this drive to want to do this at the top level, and I wanted to create an opportunity.

“As we were going through the internship, the one thing I appreciated was she was smart enough to know what she didn’t know. And you could tell because she became really inquisitive. She asked good questions, she listened, and she didn’t pretend to know. Believe me, I’ve been around (male) coaches who pretend to know. And, when they do that, usually, they get it wrong. But she just listened when she didn’t know and that’s what truly intrigued me was that she was willing to just take a backseat, listen, take it in and ask questions.”

Over the past five years, there has been a 187% increase of women in football operation roles in the NFL. Since its inception in 2017, over 400 participants have gone through the Women's Forum with over 250 opportunities emerging for women in all levels of football.

“The first Women’s Forum I attended, all of the women there, we had other jobs outside of football wanting to get into football,” King said. “I think this year almost everyone there was already working in football, which is incredible. So, I think we’re definitely heading in the right direction. It’s a lot of bright stars coming through the ranks on our way up.”

King said she hasn’t experienced challenges being one of the few female coaches in a male-dominated industry.

“I’ve been fortunate to work with some great staffs,” she said. “Coach Flus, we have a great staff here. It’s all about development, which is great. I love it. He’s big on leadership. So, the challenges haven’t been the same as possibly people would think. Like it hasn’t been a lot of: ‘Oh, it’s like a woman here.’ I haven’t really experienced any of that. It’s all about building those relationships and trust in the building with the players and the staff that you’re working with.

“I do think it’s cool now to see so many women doing great things in the league, not just coaching, all aspects, the business side, the team level, people doing great things all over the place. Obviously, the coaches are the ones that people see, but there’s a lot of great people doing cool things that you don’t see as well.”

Rivera, a two-time AP NFL Coach of the Year, has been a leader in diversity and inclusion throughout his career. He said he can envision the NFL having a female head coach in the future.

“I think it’s going to have to start with coordinator first, and as long as we keep putting women in position to have an opportunity to succeed or fail, until we give them that opportunity, we’ll never really know,” Rivera said. “But I do think we’ve created enough opportunities that eventually the right one is going to get the opportunity.”

Maybe that’ll be King.

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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl