Glazers’ Offer Raises More Questions

I’m not sure there is a more confusing set of owners in all of football than the Glazers. There may be more eccentric owners, richer owners and weirder looking owners, but in terms of annually frustrating their fan-base with inconsistent logic, give the trophy to the Glazers.

Our friends at JoeBucsFan, by way of 620 AM in Tampa, are reporting the the Buccaneers offer to Chip Kelly was in the range of 6 million dollars per year. The point “Joe” continues to make is that this will be a tough pill to swallow for those who call the Glazers cheap.

It’s not. But I’ll get to that sentiment later. Before that, the thing I find most alarming is that of the candidates still available (with Jeff Fisher off the market and Bill Cowher happily retired), do you think any of those coaches were worth that kind of funny money? That’s just an unbelievably stupid offer to make a coach who has zero NFL experience. That’s a desperate shot in the dark is what that is.

And what were they going to do once they had their six million dollar coach? How much is left in the coaching fund to go after assistants and build a staff? The Bucs don’t just have to hire a head coach as I said yesterday, they need an entire staff and after dropping six million on the lead guy, what’s left for coordinators and assistants?

If you look at the Bucs’ history, yes the Glazers will occasionally pony up and spend some money. They just spend it in dumb ways. They did it with Keyshawn Johnson, they did it with Gruden and they did it last year with Michael Koenen. Anyone feel good about those deals? Key and Gruden at least had some success with Tampa before fizzling out. But Gruden’s fat contract also stayed on the books for years after he was gone. It tanked their funds for the next coaching hire. It’s why Mark Dominik and Raheem Morris got pulled out of the bargain bin.

But look at the last big expenditure the Bucs made. 20 million dollars on a punter. I said then, I’ll say it now, that’s the dumbest contract in the history of the NFL. 20 million on a punter. That was the Glazers spending, and spending dumb.

Chip Kelly would have been more of the same.

And what precedent does that set when the next guy they offer doesn’t even see half that figure?

Yes, the Glazers were willing to offer a lot of money to an unqualified coach. And yes, I guess you can argue that makes them “not cheap.” But I’m still going to tell you they aren’t going to spend money in intelligent ways to fix this team. Just look at the last two things they broke the bank for (or tried to) in Koenen and Kelly.

Before that they dropped 100 million dollars in the same day signing up Gerald McCoy and Donald Penn. Obviously with the old rookie salary scale they were stuck paying McCoy, but that’s still a massive waste of 100 million dollars.

Yeah, the Glazers could very well spend some money this year. They could. But I’m going off precedents, I’m talking about what’s happened in the past.

Without being obligated to get to the salary minimum last year (and entering the season with a team they felt was close) they gave a punter funny-money and sat pat. Left tens of millions of empty cap space on the books. Why would it be any different this year when they still aren’t obligated to spend?

And even if they do spend the money, do you trust they’ll spend it well? 100 million dollars tied up in Donald Penn and Gerald McCoy (pillows), they signed up a punter for more than they signed all their rookies for, combined.

But yeah, offering six million dollars to an inexperienced coach definitely prove things are changing…