The NFL’s plan to expand the Rooney Rule is bad.

The commentary the league is making about itself for even considering such a proposal is even worse.

The NFL has only four minority head coaches (Mike Tomlin, Steelers; Brian Flores, Miami Dolphins; Anthony Lynn, Los Angeles Chargers; and Ron Rivera, Washington Redskins) and two minority general managers (the Dolphins’ Chris Grier and the Cleveland Browns’ Andrew Berry).

On Tuesday, the league will consider a plan to incentivize organizations to hire minority candidates to fill vacancies at those positions by moving them up in the draft.

Via Jim Trotter of NFL.com: “If a team hires a minority head coach, that team, in the draft preceding the coach’s second season, would move up six spots from where it is slotted to pick in the third round. A team would jump 10 spots under the same scenario for hiring a person of color as its primary football executive, a position more commonly known as general manager.

“If a team were to fill both positions with diverse candidates in the same year, that club could jump 16 spots — six for the coach, 10 for the GM — and potentially move from the top of the third round to the middle of the second round. Another incentive: a team’s fourth-round pick would climb five spots in the draft preceding the coach’s or GM’s third year if he is still with the team. That is considered significant because Steve Wilks and Vance Joseph, two of the four African-American head coaches hired since 2017, were fired after one and two seasons, respectively.”

According to Trotter, if a team loses a minority coach or general manager to another team “his former club would receive a fifth-round compensatory pick. And if a person of color leaves to become a head coach or general manager, his previous team would receive a third-round compensatory pick.”

Think about what this absurd theory is saying.

The NFL is so bad at considering minority candidates for positions of significant influence — in a league that comprises 70% black players, by the way — that it is actually considering sacrificing its own carefully constructed plan of competitive balance in order to address the issue.

Yup. Seriously. And this would come along with some other changes already going into the Rooney Rule.

Teams must interview 1 external minority candidate for senior football ops/GM jobs, too. And clubs and the league office must now include minorities and/or female applicants for senior-level positions, including club president. All effective after virtual league meeting tomorrow.

— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) May 18, 2020

The draft already has an incredibly convoluted and dense free-agency compensation system. For instance, the New York Jets paid Le’Veon Bell $52.5 million, and all the Steelers got was pick No. 102 (back end of the third round) as a compensatory replacement.

Under this plan, teams drafting some 20 spots higher than that in the third round could move up roughly 30% of a round based on the skin tone of the person they hire to make that selection in the first place.

And half of a round if that guy hires someone else of minority descent.

That’s an insane leap by comparison.

And before you point out how easy it is for a white guy behind a computer to type something like that, consider these comments from Lynn and former NFL head coach Tony Dungy (who also is black).

Lynn told CBS Radio, “Sometimes you can do the wrong thing while trying to do the right thing.” He added, “I think this is — out of desperation this is something that has been thrown out there.”

In an interview with ProFootballTalk.com, Dungy said: “I think the league is looking and saying, ‘Hey, punitive things haven’t worked. Let’s look at incentives.’ And maybe that’s the right way to go. But I don’t know if this is the right incentive.”

As Dungy explained, these new rules could divide white and black coaches who currently work together on coaching staffs. He also points out that minority coaches who do get hired under these circumstances may feel as if they have been promoted for the wrong reasons, that the currency of their attached draft compensation is a bigger deal than the belief in their coaching acumen.

In other words, the league would be sanctioning — and rewarding — gridiron “tokenism.”

That feels dreadful to put in print. So it must feel even worse for the NFL to consider inserting it into its bylaws. But it’s come to this.

This a league that saw its own failure to advance the careers of minorities as such a rotten problem that it instituted the Rooney Rule in the first place. And now — to strip this whole debate down to its core — the NFL is punishing itself for not taking the litigation seriously enough.

That structuring of “tokenism” is already a perception problem with the Rooney Rule as it is. Say what you will about Tomlin’s postseason failures since 2011.

And I have.

But the guy has 133 NFL victories, a Super Bowl ring and two trips to the big game. Yet it’s pretty commonplace for me to open up my email box or listen to a postgame show any time his team fails to cover the spread against the Bengals, and I get a reference from a fan to “that overrated Rooney Rule coach.”

Again, that’s for a guy who hasn’t had a losing season in 13 tries. Imagine what it’s going to be like for the next Steve Wilks or Vance Joseph to come along if the NFL implements these rules.

Yikes!

Speaking of Tomlin, Dungy mentioned concerns about “unintended consequences” in his interview with ProFootballTalk. Here are a few I can envision.

Let’s say the Steelers have a bad 2020 and fail to win a playoff game for a fourth straight season. But they stick with Tomlin anyway. Any incentive there? Or, since he is outside of the window of three years, no dice? That seems unfair.

Or, let’s say the Steelers fire him but replace him with another minority candidate. Do the Steelers reap the same reward even though that’d be a push in terms of the overall percentage of the league?

Speaking of which, we need to know the goal here. Is it a de facto NFL version of Title IX? Does this program have to stay in place until 65% to 70% of head coaches, general managers and coordinators are minorities so that the league’s numbers in those capacities are in line with the active players’ union?

If not, when does the draft incentive program cease? Is this a permanent thing? Or is this an accelerant to achieve a short-term fix?

Discussion about stiffening the Rooney Rule’s impact in the game of football doesn’t necessarily have to equate to the dismantling of racist ideology in America.

Yeah, that I get.

Although I’d argue expanding it via this sloppy plan could do more harm than good in that regard.

And, apparently, in Lynn and Dungy, there are at least two voices that should carry a lot more weight than mine who are also concerned.

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