King coached in the first NFL postseason game in which both teams had women on their coaching staffs.
On January 9, 2021, Jennifer King was part of Washington’s coaching staff in the NFC wild-card playoff game against Tampa Bay, a contest later identified as the first NFL postseason game in which both teams had women on their coaching staffs. The matchup drew attention not only because it was a playoff game, but because it placed women coaches on both sides of one of the league’s most prominent stages.
The significance of the event was tied to visibility at the highest-pressure level of the sport. Regular-season advances are important, but postseason football carries a different level of scrutiny, audience size, and symbolic weight. When women appeared on both coaching staffs in a playoff game, it demonstrated that the presence of women in football was no longer confined to isolated regular-season opportunities.
King’s presence in that game reflected the larger arc of her career under Ron Rivera, who had given her increasingly substantive responsibilities. The event also mattered because it helped break a common perception that women’s roles in football were experimental or temporary. By being visible in a playoff setting, King helped establish that women could contribute meaningfully in the sport’s most consequential contexts.