Jennifer King Reportedly Named Full-Time Assistant by Washington Football Team

The Washington Football Team is promoting Jennifer King to a full-time offensive assistant role, according to Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network.

King spent last season working as a coaching intern for Washington. 

King got her start under Ron Rivera with the Carolina Panthers, working as a spring and summer intern initially before helping to coach the running backs in the summer of 2019. She also worked for the Alliance of American Football's Arizona Hotshots as a wide receivers coach.

King then followed Rivera to Washington ahead of the 2020 season.

Though listed as a coaching intern this past year, Les Carpenter of the Washington Post wrote in May that King "is for all practical purposes the first African American woman to be a full-time NFL assistant coach. She has her own office, an unofficial role as assistant running backs coach and the same assignments scouting offensive tendencies of opponents that all assistants working their way up receive."

"All I did was help get the door open for her," Rivera said of King, per Carpenter. "She put her foot in it, and she pushed her way through."

King said in September that football has always been a huge part of her life, which prepared her for the opportunities in Carolina and Washington.

"Football has been huge to me since I was a child. I was fortunate to be able to play for 12 years and coach some at lower levels before moving to higher levels," she said on the NFL Network. "So, I definitely think I was prepared to step into this role when the opportunity presented itself."

Clearly Rivera and the Washington front office agree.