Pioneering NFL coach Katie Sowers said Wednesday that she is joining the staff of the Kansas City Chiefs this offseason.
The first woman to coach in a Super Bowl and the first openly gay coach in the NFL, Sowers spent the past four seasons with the San Francisco 49ers. When that team hired her in 2017, she became the second full-time female assistant coach in league history. She and the 49ers parted ways in January, but as she revealed on Wednesday, that wasn’t the final chapter of her NFL story. She said she is joining Kansas City’s staff through the Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellowship, a program that aims “to use NFL clubs’ training camps, offseason workout programs and minicamps” to give coaches more experience and help them gain full-time employment.
“Retired from coaching in the NFL? Nah. Kansas City … I’m home!” Sowers, 34, wrote on Instagram. She grew up in Kansas, attended the University of Central Missouri and previously held jobs in the Kansas City area, including as the city’s athletic director for its Parks and Recreation department.
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Sowers thanked the Chiefs for “believing in me and providing me another opportunity to grow my coaching experience while learning from the best in the game.”
Jennifer King has been a cop, a QB and a national champion. Next up: Redskins assistant coach.
The NFL program Sowers referenced helped her land with the 49ers as a coaching intern before the team gave her a greater role as an offensive assistant. Her initial entry to the league came as a training camp assistant in 2015 with the Atlanta Falcons, whose offensive coordinator, Kyle Shanahan, went on to become San Francisco’s head coach.
Sowers was on the sideline with Shanahan when their 49ers suffered a Super Bowl loss to the Chiefs in 2020. Before the game, she told reporters, “I’ve never been one to try to be the first, because I think when you’re trying to be the first, you’re racing other women. I think what’s most important is I’m not the last.”
Now she will have a chance to soak up knowledge from another renowned offensive mind in Kansas City Coach Andy Reid, who guided his team back to the Super Bowl in February but lost to Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
That Bucs team, coached by Bruce Arians, included two female assistants, Lori Locust and Maral Javadifar, who became the first two women to earn an NFL title as coaches. The win over the Chiefs also featured Sarah Thomas as the first woman to officiate in a Super Bowl.
“Let’s keep growing the game,” Sowers wrote on Wednesday. “See you this summer, chiefs kingdom.”
“I love Katie Sowers and love the move by the Chiefs,” tweeted Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas. “Welcome home!”
As a full-time NFL assistant, Sowers followed Kathryn Smith, who became the first woman to fill that role when she was hired by the Buffalo Bills in 2016. The first woman to coach NFL players was Jen Welter, who in 2015 worked with inside linebackers for the Arizona Cardinals as an intern during training camp and preseason.
From 2020: Katie Sowers is the first woman to coach in a Super Bowl. Her goal: ‘Make sure I’m not the last.’
In 2018, Sowers showed the Kansas City Star a diary entry from when she was eight years old. “My mom wants me to play basketball. I don’t want to. I want to play football,” she had written while growing up in a small, predominantly Mennonite community in central Kansas. A couple of years later, her parents supported that dream by giving Sowers and her sister football helmets and shoulder pads, and they both went on to play for the West Michigan Mayhem and the Kansas City Titans of the Women’s Football Alliance.
After getting a master’s degree in kinesiology from Central Missouri in 2012, Sowers moved to the Kansas City area, where a job as a youth basketball coach brought her into contact with former Chiefs general manager Scott Pioli through his daughter. Pioli helped Sowers enroll in the Bill Walsh fellowship program and get her foot in the door with the Falcons.
Shanahan told the Star in 2018 that keeping Sowers on staff after her 49ers internship ended was “a pretty easy decision for us.”
“We thought we’d be worse (off) if we let her go,” he said at the time.
The first woman to coach in a Super Bowl and the first openly gay coach in the NFL, Sowers spent the past four seasons with the San Francisco 49ers. When that team hired her in 2017, she became the second full-time female assistant coach in league history. She and the 49ers parted ways in January, but as she revealed on Wednesday, that wasn’t the final chapter of her NFL story. She said she is joining Kansas City’s staff through the Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellowship, a program that aims “to use NFL clubs’ training camps, offseason workout programs and minicamps” to give coaches more experience and help them gain full-time employment.
“Retired from coaching in the NFL? Nah. Kansas City … I’m home!” Sowers, 34, wrote on Instagram. She grew up in Kansas, attended the University of Central Missouri and previously held jobs in the Kansas City area, including as the city’s athletic director for its Parks and Recreation department.
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Sowers thanked the Chiefs for “believing in me and providing me another opportunity to grow my coaching experience while learning from the best in the game.”
Jennifer King has been a cop, a QB and a national champion. Next up: Redskins assistant coach.
The NFL program Sowers referenced helped her land with the 49ers as a coaching intern before the team gave her a greater role as an offensive assistant. Her initial entry to the league came as a training camp assistant in 2015 with the Atlanta Falcons, whose offensive coordinator, Kyle Shanahan, went on to become San Francisco’s head coach.
Sowers was on the sideline with Shanahan when their 49ers suffered a Super Bowl loss to the Chiefs in 2020. Before the game, she told reporters, “I’ve never been one to try to be the first, because I think when you’re trying to be the first, you’re racing other women. I think what’s most important is I’m not the last.”
Now she will have a chance to soak up knowledge from another renowned offensive mind in Kansas City Coach Andy Reid, who guided his team back to the Super Bowl in February but lost to Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
That Bucs team, coached by Bruce Arians, included two female assistants, Lori Locust and Maral Javadifar, who became the first two women to earn an NFL title as coaches. The win over the Chiefs also featured Sarah Thomas as the first woman to officiate in a Super Bowl.
“Let’s keep growing the game,” Sowers wrote on Wednesday. “See you this summer, chiefs kingdom.”
“I love Katie Sowers and love the move by the Chiefs,” tweeted Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas. “Welcome home!”
As a full-time NFL assistant, Sowers followed Kathryn Smith, who became the first woman to fill that role when she was hired by the Buffalo Bills in 2016. The first woman to coach NFL players was Jen Welter, who in 2015 worked with inside linebackers for the Arizona Cardinals as an intern during training camp and preseason.
From 2020: Katie Sowers is the first woman to coach in a Super Bowl. Her goal: ‘Make sure I’m not the last.’
In 2018, Sowers showed the Kansas City Star a diary entry from when she was eight years old. “My mom wants me to play basketball. I don’t want to. I want to play football,” she had written while growing up in a small, predominantly Mennonite community in central Kansas. A couple of years later, her parents supported that dream by giving Sowers and her sister football helmets and shoulder pads, and they both went on to play for the West Michigan Mayhem and the Kansas City Titans of the Women’s Football Alliance.
After getting a master’s degree in kinesiology from Central Missouri in 2012, Sowers moved to the Kansas City area, where a job as a youth basketball coach brought her into contact with former Chiefs general manager Scott Pioli through his daughter. Pioli helped Sowers enroll in the Bill Walsh fellowship program and get her foot in the door with the Falcons.
Shanahan told the Star in 2018 that keeping Sowers on staff after her 49ers internship ended was “a pretty easy decision for us.”
“We thought we’d be worse (off) if we let her go,” he said at the time.
