The NFL accelerator program\u2014an annual summit to help minority coaches gain connections and increase their chances at advancement in the league\u2014is returning after the league ended the program last year. And upon its return next week, there will be a Detroit Lions assistant coach who will participate.<\/p>\n
Kafka was hired by the Lions this offseason to help replace the void left by the firing of offensive coordinator John Morton. While Drew Petzing earned the offensive coordinator job, Kafka will still be an integral part of Detroit\u2019s offense.<\/p>\n
Kafka, whose mother is Puerto Rican\u2014therefore qualifying him as a minority under the league\u2019s Rooney Rule\u2014nearly found himself in an NFL job after the 2024 season. After a couple of strong years as the Giants offensive coordinator, Kafka was a finalist for the Saints head coach job before they eventually landed on Kellen Moore.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust networking and meeting a lot of the coaches that are here,\u201d Kafka told NFL Network. \u201cThen we\u2019re breaking down into workshops and talking about media and things that come up in these interviews. So, it\u2019s all great information–it\u2019s all great ways to continue to improve as a coach.\u201d<\/p>\n
That could mean Kafka sees more head coaching opportunities in 2027 if the Lions offense succeeds this upcoming year. Although it\u2019s worth noting that the Lions would not receive draft pick compensation if Kafka becomes a head coach next year. In order to qualify for Rooney Rule compensation of two third-round picks, the promoted coach needs to have been with the previous team for at least two seasons.<\/p>\n
Fowler only provides a partial list of the expected 34 coaches and executives who will be in attendance at this year\u2019s accelerator program, so it\u2019s possible other Lions employees will be there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NFL accelerator program\u2014an annual summit to help minority coaches gain connections and increase their chances at advancement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":893002,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2071],"tags":[146,113,119392,153,2506,7,147,6],"class_list":["post-893001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-detroit-lions","tag-detroit","tag-detroit-lions","tag-detroit-lions-coaching-news-and-rumors","tag-detroit-lions-news","tag-detroitlions","tag-football","tag-lions","tag-nfl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116585575430625414","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=893001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/893002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=893001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=893001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=893001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}