At the beginning of the current NFL season, nine women held full time coaching positions at the team level. The likes of the Buccaneers, Browns and Commanders have all embraced the opportunity to diversify their staff.

Eight years ago, that wasn’t the case, until Dr Jen Welter made a phone call to the Arizona Cardinals and in becoming the first female coach afforded a role within the NFL ranks, became a catalyst for a new generation of women to follow their own dreams.

“It’s really important that you know when one woman breaks down a barrier it starts to open people’s hearts and minds to thinking differently and to give people an opportunity,” explains Jen, who spent a memorable training camp and preseason coaching on Bruce Arians’ staff in Arizona in 2015.

“I was already coaching in the Indoor Football League. After my friend Sarah Thomas was hired as an NFL official, a reporter asked Bruce Arians if he could ever see a woman coaching in the NFL and he said that the second a woman proves that she can make these guys better she’ll be hired. So that comment kind of started a conversation. A couple of the talking head shows on TV talked about it and mentioned there was already a woman coaching and they brought up my name.”

From that seemingly innocuous comment and debate came an inquiry and a phone call as Jen – whose determined personality would not let such a potential opportunity pass by – took the first step on what became a game-changing path. Taking advice from her head coach, she made that fateful call.

“I ended up calling the Arizona Cardinals and talking to Bruce’s assistant and said: ‘my head coach wants to talk to your head coach about the comments he made with respect to women coaching in the NFL’.”

The two coaches talked, and Jen was invited to attend OTAs (Organized Team Activities) that offseason.

“It was fascinating because one of the things that made Bruce open to that opportunity was that when he was coaching in college, he said one of the best coaches he had ever come across was a receivers coach at Hinds Junior College and her name was Dot Murphy,” Jen adds. “The fact that it had not changed in all this time, that it was no better for women, he said that’s gotta change. I didn’t knock on all 32 doors; Bruce made that happen really on his own.”

Once invited to join the Cardinals, the realization set in that Jen was wading into unchartered waters, stepping into a traditionally and exclusively male domain. It was conceivable that she would not be accepted by either the team’s players or staff.

“The guys were great, and they were curious and they were welcoming, so I never had any direct pushback,” Jen explained. “For me it was about and getting to know what the guys needed and where could I add value.

“We had a rookie, his name was Edwin Jackson, and I was coaching him up on something for special teams and in that moment, Lorenzo Alexander comes by who’s a special teams god, and great player and I’m telling Edwin something, and he looks at him, as if to say: ‘what do you think?’ He just looks at him and tells him right there that what I was telling him was spot on. That to me was such an important moment because he could have very easily have completely undercut me.

“Bruce set up the situation in a special way. He actually went to the leaders of his locker room and made sure they knew that I had played the game, they knew that I was an indoor football coach. Then the guys were excited to be a part of history, they knew everything about me before I even walked in the door. They had done their homework. The guys would always joke that if a movie was made about this, they’d want to be in it.”

Back then in 2015, the message for women wishing to break into most sports was that their opportunities would always be limited, if not non-existent. The success of trailblazers who have since coached at different levels and are now trusted and accepted teachers of the game means that doors are beginning to open.

“You can’t say it’s impossible once it’s been shown it is possible,” Jen says. “Breaking barriers is as much about changing mentalities, but it’s still not equitable by any stretch of the imagination until it’s prevalent. There are still the outliers and women still have to prove people wrong.

“As much as people want to pat ourselves on the back we’re nowhere near where we can be. My promise to the sport of football since I first got an opportunity to play 23 years ago has been to change the game and to believe that it’s this simple. People call American football the final frontier for girls and women in sports.”

That frontier is closer, thanks to those such as Jen who have grasped opportunity and to the likes of Bruce Arians.

“I was so nervous, that first day with the Cardinals,” Jen remembers. “I’m the only woman out there, it’s kind of like all eyes on me and all these awkward thoughts that go through your head. But then here’s the head coach of this team and the second he sees me; he puts somebody else in charge of what he’s doing, and he comes over and puts me at ease. He walks me to the sidelines and for someone like me, who’s such an outsider, to have him go out of his way just on a good human person level, I’ll never forget it.”