A white cornerback finally starts in the NFL
Riley Moss is the first white CB since 2002.
In a triumph for diversity, Riley Moss has begun the 2024 NFL season as a starting cornerback for the Denver Broncos. After three games, he’s second on the team in tackles. He’s the NFL’s first non-black player to begin the season as a starter at cornerback since 2002.
Two other white cornerbacks are on rosters, although they are not playing much yet: Ethan Bonner is listed as third-stringer at corner on the Miami Dolphins depth chart and rookie Cooper DeJean has returned a punt for the Philadelphia Eagles.
Back in the 1990s, Jason Sehorn was a star cornerback for the New York Giants, but then he got hurt. He played his last game at cornerback in 2002, then switched to safety for one last year. So Sehorn had been the last all-white player to start the season as a starting cornerback. The other last non-black starting cornerback had been Kevin Kaesviharn, who is half white and half Thai. I believe he played cornerback in 2002 before switching to safety for the rest of his career.
Moss and DeJean starred together at the U. of Iowa. I suspect that somebody on the Iowa coaching staff said, “You know, while I’m sure blacks do tend to be better than whites at corner on average, maybe everybody’s overlooking a few decent white corners. Maybe the stereotype that no white can play corner has gotten unrealistically strong over the years?”
There was an old Fortune 500 saying: “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.” Similarly, the prospect of starting a white guy at cornerback probably scared a lot of coaches. If he got burned on a couple of touchdowns, you could be fired by Monday. If your black cornerback got burned twice, well, that’s not good, but at least you didn’t hang a big Fire Me sign on your back.
By the way: I’m doing book tour appearances in Chicago this week to promote my anthology Noticing: dinner on Thursday evening September 26th downtown and a speaking event on Friday night September 27th on Chicago’s north lakefront.
See Passage Press’s website for tickets.
Interesting that it's the Broncos. I wonder if this white dude is somehow better adapted for the oxygen situation up there: think West African sprinters vs. distance runners.
This problem is the same in football and basketball (but much more exacerbated in basketball). Coach logic: “I’m having tryouts for the highschool team and theres 20 white guys and 20 black guys trying out, and theyre all 14 years old. Theres 10 roster spots. I want to pick the guys that will be the best athletes by age 18, when theyre seniors. On average, a black guy will jump higher and run a little faster than a white guy. I therefore will pick 10 black players to be on the team.” This logic rests on the fact that at an individual level, its a better bet that the black guy will grow up to be taller or faster, skills aside. But obviously some of those white guys will grow up to be taller and faster amd stronger than some of those black guys, but you cant predict which ones. So you hope by picking all blacks you end up with a higher random average.
This is why so few white basketball players get on too AAU teams, or college scholrships. Its also the fact that white Americans are much more dispersed in small towns than black Americans, therefore less opportunity to play sports for big highschools or big AAU/little league teams.