Bucs' Harold Goodwin Supports Eugene Chung: 'Got to Keep Fighting the Good Fight'

Last month, former NFL assistant coach Eugene Chung revealed he was told he was "not the right minority we’re looking for" during an interview with an NFL team this offseason, per Nicole Yang of the Boston Globe.

On Thursday, Tampa Bay Buccaneers assistant head coach and run game coordinator Harold Goodwin lent his support to Chung. 

"Being a minority in this league, there's ups and downs, and we know the process has been pretty hard for us at times," he told reporters. "But we've got to keep fighting the good fight. Hopefully the NFL will investigate and get to the bottom of it and just move on and make the whole situation better so we can put this issue to bed for one time in the near future."

Chung said during the interview he was told he wasn't "a minority," and when he pushed back against that assessment was told he wasn't "the right minority."

“That’s when I realized what the narrative was," he told Yang. "I was blown away, emotionally paralyzed for a split second. I asked myself, ‘Did I hear that correctly?'"

“I’m not sitting here bashing the league at all, because there are great mentors and there are great coaches that embrace the difference,” he added. “It’s just when the Asians don’t fit the narrative, that’s where my stomach churns a little bit.”

The NFL released a statement in late May saying it was investigating the matter and that the alleged remarks were "completely inappropriate and contrary to league values and workplace policies."

Goodwin has been critical of the league's hiring practices in the past, saying in 2019 that only two team owners—Buffalo's Terry Pegula and Jacksonville's Shad Khan—were present for the head-coaching interviews he had in the past, per Jenna Laine of ESPN.

He suggested at the time that most teams don't take the Rooney Rule—which requires that teams interview at least two non-white candidates for head coaching vacancies and at least one non-white candidate for all coordinator positions and senior front office openings—seriously.  

"We as minorities in the NFL have gone through this for years on top of years. And it's continuing to be a subject," he added Thursday. "... It's just up to us as coaches to keep putting our faces out there, to keep putting our work on tape and to just keep striving to get to the table, to have the conversations to possibly be a head coach or a GM or whatever it may be. That's how we got to live."