Michael Dixon
A longstanding and oft-discussed NFL rule is being changed. With the consent of their employers, assistant coaches of playoff teams can now be hired before the playoffs end.
Coaches can now officially be hired during playoffs, with consent of original team. In other words, 49ers could have announced Kyle Shanahan
— Andrew Siciliano (@AndrewSiciliano) March 28, 2017
Assistant coaches of the NFL’s best teams have long had their promotion chances hurt by deep playoff runs. Teams who need to hire coaches are often impatient and don’t want to wait until after the Super Bowl. The San Francisco 49ers were indeed patient with Kyle Shanahan in 2017. But they were, by a wide margin, the last NFL team to fill a head coaching vacancy.
A couple things are worth nothing.
One, it should be repeated that the original employers of teams can still nix any official announcements. So, even under the new rule, the Atlanta Falcons could have blocked San Francisco from officially announcing Shanahan as the head coach until after the Super Bowl.
Two, the chances of playoff coaches whose teams don’t have a bye week are unaltered.
Since his Falcons had a bye week, Shanahan was permitted to interview with the 49ers during Wild Card week. But if Atlanta didn’t earn a bye, or if San Francisco was interested in a coach from the Green Bay Packers or Pittsburgh Steelers, it would have had to wait until after the conference championships.
