Pawn PlayerState reference on client is sometimes NULL

Development Character & Animation
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25

The behavior of the Player State being set to null on calling Unpossess() on the controller is still present as of 5.3.2.
Namely, AController::UnPossess() is calling OnUnPossess():

void AController::UnPossess()
{
	APawn* CurrentPawn = GetPawn();

	if (CurrentPawn == nullptr)
	{
		return;
	}

	OnUnPossess();
//...

AController::OnUnPossess() is calling Pawn->UnPossessed(), which is doing the setting of the player state to null:

void APawn::UnPossessed()
{
	AController* const OldController = Controller;

	ForceNetUpdate();

	SetPlayerState(nullptr);
	SetOwner(nullptr);
	Controller = nullptr;
//...

Design-wise, why do calls to AController::UnPossess() (and AController::Possess(), in fact) modify the player state at all? Or is this really a long-existent bug?