in the NFC Championship Game at the Georgia Dome on January 22, 2017 in Atlanta, Georgia.

The NFL is considering changing its tampering rules, allowing teams to hire coaches before those coaches are finished with the postseason with their current team, according to a report by Adam Schefter.

Currently, teams must wait until a coach’s current team is out of the postseason.

The competition committee raised the issue, and the Atlanta Falcons also are behind it.

The Falcons have experienced it on both ends, with waiting to hire now-head coach Dan Quinn away from the Seattle Seahawks during the 2014 postseason and having the San Francisco 49ers court then-offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan while they were marching through last season’s playoffs.

In theory, the current rule ensures that coaches won’t be distracted from their current jobs during the playoffs, but really, that’s silly reasoning. If an assistant coach is going to take another job, they’re already going to be distracted, and that doesn’t mean they can’t do their job well. Case in point: former Ohio State assistant Tom Herman stayed on with the Buckeyes during their 2014 College Football Playoff run after taking a job at Houston, and OSU pulled two upsets with a new quarterback en route to a national title.

Teams with new head coaches that can’t put together coaching staffs are at a far bigger disadvantage than teams who have assistants that will be moving on to other jobs.

[ESPN]

About Kevin Trahan

Kevin mostly covers college football and college basketball, with an emphasis on NCAA issues and other legal issues in sports. He is also an incoming law student. He's written for SB Nation, USA Today, VICE Sports, The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal, among others. He is a graduate of Northwestern University.