ORLANDO, Fla. — Jeff Ulbrich hopes his brief tenure as interim head coach of the New York Jets doesn’t prevent him from leading an NFL team again someday.
Daronte Jones, a fellow defensive coordinator, is making sure he’s ready for a promotion.
Both Jones, hired in January for his present role with the Washington Commanders, and Ulbrich, preparing for his second season of his second stint with the Atlanta Falcons, were among 34 participants in the NFL’s revamped coaching and front office accelerator program Monday and Tuesday at a posh resort just a few miles from Disney World.
“I would like to hope that people don’t judge me 100% off of that experience, because it is challenging but, at the same time, I learned a lot, although it was not necessarily my team and my culture and my staff,” Ulbrich said about going 3-9 with the 2024 Jets after replacing Robert Saleh.
“I loved all the members of that team, both players and coaches alike, but I did learn the responsibilities and the things that come across that desk that I had no clue of. I think we make assumptions that we know, and until you actually sit in it — it was eye-opening to say the least.”
The NFL created the accelerator program in 2022 as an extension of the league’s Rooney Rule to increase diversity among coaches and front office executives.
Participants get an opportunity to connect with owners and team executives, and they also attend sessions designed to equip them for future interviews. The program was paused last year and now includes nonminority participants. Nearly half of this year’s group were white men, including Ulbrich.
Other participants included former Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel, who is entering his first season as offensive coordinator for the Los Angeles Chargers; former New York Giants interim coach Mike Kafka, who’s now an assistant for the Detroit Lions; Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy; and Minnesota Vikings assistant Josh McCown.
“I get caught in my defensive-minded silo in that I don’t think about potential coaching staffs, I don’t think about the global vision of a team necessarily as often as I should,” Ulbrich said. “This is that opportunity to step away from your club and step away from your primary role that you’re currently serving and really look at it from that perspective. There’s a ton of power in that because it’s not your job until it’s your job, and to think that you’re just going to fall into it and have success, you’re setting yourself up for a real failure that way.
“This is definitely preparing us in a way that we wouldn’t otherwise be prepared. So I’m very grateful to the NFL for having this and providing this for us.”
Jones joined the Commanders after his second stint in Minnesota. He was the defensive backs coach for the Vikings in 2020, spent 2021 in the college ranks as the defensive coordinator at LSU, then returned to Minneapolis from 2022-2025.
“It’s been great, the perspective of challenging who you are as a person and self-awareness, fear and how that can kind of tap into things and just identify things so it’s been very informative that way,” Jones said about his experience in the accelerator program.
“I’m very thankful for having this program. Just the amount of information and resources that was allotted to us these last 48 hours has been huge, so I’m just thankful and grateful to be a part of this. You’re getting so much information you want to share it to others, and you’re like, ‘Man, I wish other people could hear this,’ and it’s just been very valuable.”
One head coach (Aaron Glenn) and two general managers (Ran Carthon and Ian Cunningham) were hired after participating in the original iteration of the NFL’s accelerator program.
The league has been under scrutiny for its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Last week, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier issued a subpoena to the NFL as his office investigates whether the league has committed potential civil rights violations related to the Rooney Rule and the league’s other employment practices, policies and programs.
Uthmeier threatened possible enforcement actions against the league in March if it didn’t suspend the 23-year-old Rooney Rule, which requires NFL teams to interview at least two external minority candidates for head coach, general manager and coordinator positions. At least one minority candidate must be interviewed for the quarterbacks coach position.
Uthmeier said in a letter to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell that the Rooney Rule amounts to “blatant race and sex discrimination.”
“I think all of our policies, all of our programs need to be looked at because the challenges are different,” Goodell said. “And so as we’re looking at every single one of our programs, we did that, whether it’s the accelerator program or any one of the policies. It’s one of the things we spent time on today, is how do we continue to look at our policies in scheduling? How do we look at policies in international?
“All of those things are hoping to make our game better, make it more accessible to our fans. And that doesn’t happen without a lot of work and refocus. You can call it innovation, I think it is in many ways, but it’s a desire to get better.”