Jen Welter Is Teaching Men, and Girls, as N.F.L.’s First Female Coach

Welter, playing running back, made history as the first woman who was not a kicker to play for a men’s professional team.

And last week, when the Arizona Cardinals hired her to work with their inside linebackers for training camp and the preseason, she became the first female coach in the N.F.L.

hired its first full-time female referee, Sarah Thomas, who will begin calling games in the regular season starting next month.

While the new executives work largely out of public view, Welter and Thomas operate on the field in front of fans (like the female referees who have worked in the N.B.A.

Cardinals Coach Bruce Arians, who recruited Welter, said that she would bring much to the team and that her hiring did not reflect any agenda or image burnishing.

Welter, 37, played rugby in college and competed for more than a dozen years in a women’s professional football league.

Fans of Welter, who was hired three months after the league hired its first full-time female referee, Sarah Thomas.

The playbook is also far more complex in the Indoor Football League (the Revolution became a member of Champions Indoor Football this year), teams play eight men to a side instead of 11 as they do in the N.F.L.

Welter as a member of the Indoor Football League’s Texas Revolution.

Amy Trask, who worked nearly 30 years for the Raiders in Los Angeles and Oakland, eventually becoming chief executive of the team, understands why Welter and Thomas have attracted so much attention.