Rams, Niners get comp picks for exec signings … Lost in the spate of G.M. and coaching signings over the past couple of days is the fact that the LA Rams and San Francisco became the first teams to acquire compensatory 3rd round picks in both 2021 and 2022 as a result of the NFL’s new minority hiring initiative. That initiative, agree on this fall, mandates that teams that have an assistant hired as either a head coach or general manager by another team will get two 3rd round comp picks in successive years. If a team loses a second assistant in the same year they would get a third comp pick in a third year. Note that these comp picks will be at the end of the 3rd round after the regular comp picks have been assigned. The Rams will get the comp picks after Detroit hired Brad Holmes, the Rams’ director of college scouting, to be their new G.M., while San Francisco was rewarded when the Jets named 49ers’ defensive co-ordinator Robert Saleh as their new head coach. In doing so, Saleh becomes the first Muslim American to coach an NFL team. While we are all for hiring equality, there is a certain bizarreness to the NFL policy. It seems like the teams that should be rewarded for hiring a minority are the teams actually doing the hiring, in these cases the Lions and Jets. In fact, one could see where the current policy could actually limit minority hiring opportunities if teams were reluctant to see an opponent get a couple of extra picks. The policy could also have the unintended consequence of rewarding better teams as teams hiring new coaches tend to be primarily bottom feeders that usually hire people currently working for more successful programs. But this is the NFL in which it seems that the next logical policy that the league comes up will be their first.
