Jennifer King is one of the many women blazing a trail in the NFL. With the league hiring more women in front offices, on officiating crews, and along the sideline, King is part of a select group helping add new paths for women in sports.
Who Is Jennifer King?
King has been involved in sports at a high level for the better part of two decades. She was a two-sport athlete at Guilford College, where she competed in both softball and basketball. After college, she joined the Carolina Phoenix of the Women’s Football Alliance, where she played quarterback and wide receiver and was named a seven-time All-American.
King’s coaching career in professional football began in earnest in 2018 when she met former NFL head coach Ron Rivera, then the HC of the Carolina Panthers, at the NFL’s Women’s Forum, according to The Athletic.
At the time, she was the head coach of the women’s basketball team at Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, NC. Her team won the United States Collegiate Athletic Association national championship that season.
After Rivera asked King to speak to the Panthers, she was offered a coaching internship with the team. Between 2018 and 2020, she spent time as an intern with Carolina, as assistant wide receivers coach of the Arizona Hotshots of the now-defunct Alliance of American Football, and as an offensive assistant at Dartmouth College.
In 2020, King received her first full-time opportunity in the NFL. When Rivera was hired by the Washington Commanders (then the Washington Football Team), he brought King along with him to D.C. She worked as a coaching intern, primarily assisting with the running backs, before receiving a promotion to assistant running backs coaching in 2021.
That promotion marked King’s first full-time coaching position in the NFL and the league’s first full-time hiring of an African American woman coach. King held that role for three seasons. In 2022, she also became the first woman to serve as a position coach in the East-West Shrine Bowl, where she coached running backs.
In 2024, head coach Matt Eberflus and the Chicago Bears hired King as an offensive assistant, a role in which she’ll focus on coaching the RB unit.
