NFL owners ratified proposals Tuesday to award a pair of third-round draft choices to any team that develops a minority candidate hired by another franchise as a head coach or general manager, and to expand the playoff field by two teams if the coronavirus pandemic cuts short the regular season.

The approval votes by the owners were taken as they met remotely Tuesday.

The hiring resolution is subject to approval by the NFL Players Association. It was developed by the league’s workplace diversity committee and represented the NFL’s latest effort to address its lack of minority candidates hired last offseason. The league’s new approach of rewarding the team that develops a minority candidate came after a previous proposal to reward the franchise that hires a minority candidate was not enacted by the owners during a remote meeting in May.

Under the system approved Tuesday by the owners, a team receives third-round compensatory picks in the following two NFL drafts if a minority candidate is hired from its organization to serve as the head coach or general manager for another franchise. If a single team loses minority candidates hired as both a head coach and GM elsewhere, it would receive third-round compensatory choices in the following three NFL drafts.

The minority candidate must have been with the team for at least two years with no break in employment and cannot have already been the team’s head coach or general manager for that team to be eligible for the draft-pick awards.

Only one minority head coach was hired leaguewide last offseason: Ron Rivera by the Washington Football Team. The NFL has four minority head coaches: Rivera in Washington, Mike Tomlin in Pittsburgh, Brian Flores in Miami and Anthony Lynn with the Los Angeles Chargers. The league has two Black general managers, in the Dolphins’ Chris Grier and Andrew Berry of the Cleveland Browns. No Black head coaches were hired last offseason and many minority coaches were particularly upset that Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy was passed over.

The NFL took steps in May to bolster its minority hiring practices, including strengthening its Rooney Rule to require a team to interview at least two minority candidates from outside the organization, instead of one, for a head coaching vacancy. The league also formally applied the interviewing rule to coordinator positions.

But owners tabled a proposal in May under which a team could have moved up six spots in the third-round draft order by hiring a minority head coach and 10 spots by hiring a minority GM. League leaders said at the time they would reconsider the issue and attempt to come up with a better way to incentivize diversity in hiring.

The resolution ratified Tuesday said that NFL teams “believe that policies designed to promote equal employment opportunity and a diverse and inclusive workforce advance significant league interests.” It also said that teams “believe that it is appropriate to take additional steps to enhance opportunities for employment and advancement of minorities and women in key positions, including leadership roles in coaching, personnel, and football operations.”

EXPANDED POSTSEASON PLAN

The playoff proposal was put forth by the NFL’s competition committee. Now that it’s approved, the NFL will have 16 teams in the playoff field this season, up from 14, if regular season games are canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic and cannot be made up. Playoff spots would be based on teams’ winning percentages if all teams are unable to play all 16 regular season games.

The NFL’s first option, under the competition committee’s resolution, would be to add a Week 18 to the 17-week regular season to accommodate rescheduled games. If the canceled games still could not be made up that way, the 16-team playoff field would take effect. Eight teams in each conference would qualify for the postseason and no team would have a first-round playoff bye.

The owners rejected a portion of the proposal that would have seeded the playoff teams based entirely on winning percentages, without guaranteeing a home playoff game to a division winner. That guarantee remains.

The NFL rescheduled a series of games in Weeks 4 and 5 of the season amid a coronavirus outbreak on the Tennessee Titans. But the league has had only minimal disruptions to its schedule in the four weeks since then and just completed its Week 9 games. The NFL has utilized a modification to its protocols by which anyone classified as a high-risk close contact to an individual with the coronavirus is quarantined for five days.