• NFL owners are scheduled to vote on a proposal this afternoon that would push the coach-hiring cycle back, essentially delaying head coach interviews of candidates working for NFL teams (coaches that are out of work or in college wouldn’t apply) until after the divisional round.
The proposal comes two years after the Bills submitted a similar, albeit more aggressive, plan that would have barred front office and coach interviews until after the conference title games and hires until after the Super Bowl. The thought then, and now, is to be fair to candidates whose teams are still in the playoffs, and to the teams who are competing in the playoffs, too. And that part does make some sense.
The flip side here is that it would make getting an operation up and running even harder on a new coach, at a time when job security across the NFL is as tenuous as ever. If, say, February hires become the norm, then more teams will be in the situation the Colts were in last year, when they were at the combine still working to fill out their coaching staff. That would also mean good teams would have to replace coaches poached into March.
The reality is there’s no easy answer here because of how the league has arranged the offseason calendar—with the downtime between the playoffs and unofficial start of the offseason (the combine)—essentially ground down to nothing.
That said, the fact that it’s a voting matter at a meeting football people don’t attend, tells me there are owners and/or league-office people motivated to push it through now.
