Fifteen full-time female coaches will be spotted on the sidelines during the 2024–2025 National Football League season. Up 25% from the 2021 season, this is the most number of female coaches the league has ever had. These women are a part of 10 separate staffs, which means almost one-third of the 32 teams in the NFL have at least one female coach.
Three out of those 15 women are coaching for the Baltimore Ravens: Kaelyn Buskey, assistant strength and conditioning coach; Megan Rosburg, assistant to the head coach/defensive assistant; and Marianna Salas, coaching fellow.
“We are very privileged to be on the first wave of this,” Salas said in an interview with Sports Illustrated. “And I think about what it says to women and girls now to be able to see any of us on the sideline or to see us out at practice.”
The first ever female coach in the NFL was hired a mere nine years ago—Jen Welter worked as a defensive coaching intern for the Arizona Cardinals during the preseason of their 2015 season.
The following year, the Buffalo Bills hired the NFL’s first full-time female coach, Kathryn Smith, as a special teams quality control coach. And just four years ago, the first woman ever to coach in a Super Bowl, Katie Sowers, was an offensive assistant for the San Francisco 49ers during their loss to Kansas City at Super Bowl LIV.
“There are a lot of women out there that are really interested in football, that are really talented, that can help us be a better team,” John Harbaugh, Baltimore Ravens head coach, said in an interview with Sports Illustrated.
These female coaches are working their way up through the ranks just like any male coach would, and there have been murmurs as to when we’ll see a female head coach.
“We’ll eliminate the needs for the labels of ‘female coach,’ ‘female GM,’ ‘female scout,’ and I think that’s really at the end of the day what we’re all shooting for. Just to be able to come in, do our jobs and have winning teams,” Lori Locust, defensive quality control coach for the Tennessee Titans, said in a tweet from On Her Turf.
According to Associated Press reporter Rob Maaddi, it may be more likely that we see a female head of operations or general manager before head coach. However, it could happen sooner rather than later. Before the 2022 season, the Denver Broncos hired Kelly Kleine as the executive director of football operations and the Minnesota Vikings interviewed Catherine Raîche for the general manager position.
The NFL has actually had a female general manager before: Susan Tose Spencer took over the Philadelphia Eagles from her father, Leonard Tose, in the 1980s.
There have been advancements in other elements of football, with Sarah Thomas being the first woman ever to become a full-time official in 2015, first on-field female official in playoff history in 2019, and the first woman to officiate a Super Bowl in 2021 at LV.
Also, the newest version of Madden NFL, a sports-simulation game where players can build their own teams and execute plays during a realistic four quarters of gameplay, will give players the opportunity to play as a female coach for the first time ever. Madden NFL is one of the best selling video games in the United States and has been in the top 10 for 12 years in a row, so adding the option of a playable female coach will not only bring more attention to women coaching in the NFL and to the game but also normalize female coaches.
“Right now, you see female coaches as part of the coaching staff,” Connor Dougan, senior design director for Madden, said in an interview with Sports Illustrated. “As someone who’s making games, we need to represent that.”
The other “Big Four” men’s leagues are making strides in increasing the number of female coaches as well. Major League Baseball leads the charge with over 43 female coaches in 2023. The National Basketball Association has had 15 total female coaches, with five active assistant coaches this season (Teresa Weatherspoon is leaving the NBA to become the head coach of the WNBA’s Chicago Sky this year). The National Hockey League is slowly bringing up the rear, adding its first ever female coach just a few months ago, with Jessica Campbell joining the Seattle Kraken coaching staff as an assistant coach.
Hopefully “female” coaches will soon, as Locust said, just be known as coaches, thanks to these trailblazing women breaking down barriers.
