Buccaneers: Monken as full time OC is puzzling
By James Yarcho
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have promoted Todd Monken to full time Offensive Coordinator. A move that, as it stands now, makes no sense.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have decided to promote Todd Monken to full time Offensive Coordinator and promote offensive assistant Skylar Fulton to wide receivers coach per a report by Tampa Bay Times writer Rick Stroud. In doing so, they’ve raised a big question with no real answer anywhere in sight.
Why?
What exactly is it going to accomplish promoting Monken? This is nothing against Monken, don’t get me wrong, but at the end of the day this is a meaningless move that seems purely superficial. It’s the ability to say “see, we made an adjustment to the staff,” rather than actually solving any issues.
Monken’s input as offensive coordinator will do little to nothing if I had to guess. Why? Because he still – as of now – isn’t going to get play calling duties on game day. So, that means that the offensive game plan that gets installed during the week, the film study done on the opponent, and the man who is preparing the offense to take the field and expose a defense won’t be the one actually calling the shots when it counts.
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In what way is it beneficial to have the offense prepare under one guy then have a different guy trying to execute the game plan?
To be fair, this isn’t a slight against Dirk Koetter, either. However, as the head coach he has to oversee the preparation of the entire team, not just the offense. Yes, he will be in the film rooms and be part of the game plan installation, but not to the level that an offensive coordinator is. That’s why you have coordinators. They are men there that you are supposed to trust to succeed each and every week. There is no trust there if Koetter won’t relinquish the play calling and just allow Monken to do the job he was hired to do.
Things didn’t work out too well in 2017 on the offense. Aside from Jameis Winston getting injured, the offense finished 18th in points per game with 20.9, 27th in the league in rush yards per game with 90.6, and fourth in the league in passing yards per game with 272.9. There is far too large a discrepancy between the passing game and the running game for this to be considered an effective offense.
Not to mention, they had the 24th ranked red zone offense, scoring touchdowns on only 49.06% of their red zone trips. They had no problem moving the ball up and down the field, but once they got into the red zone, they stalled far too often. Monken could breathe new life into the offense and elevate it to match the talent they have on paper, but won’t be able to unless he gets to call the plays.
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If you’re going to announce that someone is getting a promotion – as the Buccaneers did with Monken – why not let them do the job you announced they’ve been promoted to do?