Former Lions head coach and Bills defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz didn’t land a job on a coaching staff for the 2015 season and said that he’d reached a point in his career where he “can be selective about opportunities.”
Schwartz also said that he was confident that an appealing opportunity will present itself to him at some point in the future and it appears he’s found a way to stay busy and around the game until that happens. Alex Marvez of FOXSports.com reports that Schwartz will serve as a consultant for the league’s officiating department.
It would be the first time that Schwartz will work directly with the league’s officials, although he’s had an impact on that office in the past. During a Thanksgiving game in 2012, Schwartz threw a red flag to assert that Texans running back Justin Forsett was down a short way into what was ruled an 81-yard touchdown. League rules at the time were that throwing the challenge flag negated the automatic review of a scoring play, but the rule was changed during the next offseason to ensure the play would still be reviewed even if a coach was overzealous with his challenge.
Per Marvez, Schwartz’s main role will be “to help provide a coach’s perspective with some of the decisions made by the officiating office” and the aforementioned rule change probably takes care of one big suggestion that Schwartz would have made from a coach’s point of view.