The NFL is expanding the Rooney Rule to require in-person interviews with outside minority candidates, according to a report

Eighteen years after its adoption, the NFL’s Rooney Rule is being expanded again. The league will inform team owners on Tuesday of rule updates for the upcoming 2022 hiring cycle, NFL Media’s Tom Pelissero reports, including a mandate that teams conduct at least one in-person interview with an outside minority candidate for head coaching and general manager jobs .

It marks the second expansion of the rule in as many years, coming after the 2021 offseason, when two minority head coaches (David Culley, Robert Saleh) and three minority GMs (Brad Holmes, Martin Mayhew, Terry Fontenot) were hired.

“In May, owners tabled a proposal from the Buffalo Bills to slow down the head coaching cycle, with interviews only after championship games and no hiring until the Super Bowl in February,” Pelissero wrote Tuesday. “That proposal failed to gain traction among owners and will not go to a vote at these meetings, sources say.” But we hope that other changes, including the mandatory in-person interview with an external minority candidate, will have the same effect of slowing down the process and promoting diversity.”

Last year, the NFL began requiring teams to interview at least two outside minority candidates for coaches and general managers, and at least one minority candidate for each coordinator job. Later in 2020, the league added a resolution awarding teams whose minority candidates were hired elsewhere for one of those positions with a pair of future third-round draft picks.

The Rooney Rule, which also expanded in 2018, was originally enacted to require each team with a head coaching vacancy to interview at least one different candidate. It was updated to include GMs and equivalent front offices in 2009.