Defensive line coach Jay Hayes oversees the Bill Walsh NFL Minority Coaching Fellowship program for the Bengals.
Three current Bengals staffers are beneficiaries of the Bill Walsh NFL Minority Coaching Fellowship program and they gave back this offseason and preseason by giving the same chance to four young coaches during the club's spring and training camp practices.
Three of them are former NFL players and one, cornerback Duane Starks, started for head coach Marvin Lewis' NFL-record setting defense in Baltimore in 2000. Starks, who played with three other teams during eight seasons in the league, is working this month and returns for the first part of training camp.
Another eight-year NFL vet, former Vikings, Eagles and Buccaneers tight end Andrew Jordan, Jr., who has coached at Earlham College in Richmond, Ind., is working this month.
Former University of Cincinnati linebacker Brad Jackson, who also played for that Baltimore defense during four NFL seasons, is set to help coach in the early part of training camp. So is Theron Grinage, Jr., the defensive line coach at Long Island University-Post.
Lewis actually worked under Walsh and later Chiefs coach Marty Schottenheimer for two summers in the program. Bengals defensive line coach Jay Hayes, who oversees the program for the Bengals, also participated in it. So did new Bengals offensive assistant Brian Braswell, who Hayes recruited a few summers ago to work a Bengals training camp.
"We are happy to have these guys with us," Lewis said in a Friday news release. "This program helped me get ahead as a coach, and it's great to see it continue as strong as it is. It's a good experience for our full-time coaches as well as the interns."
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