Bears firing Matt Eberflus is bad news for the Buccaneers
By Josh Hill
Black Friday saw the Chicago Bears get a head start on Black Monday, as the team mercifully decided to fire head coach Matt Eberflus. The move came after yet another coaching blunder that saw the Bears lose in regulation on Thanksgiving after Eberflus mismanaging an end-of-game scenario — the second time in 11 days such a thing has happened.
Not for nothing but Eberflus getting fired for poor coaching decisions that actively held his team back is something Tampa Bay Buccaneers fans will look at when it comes to Todd Bowles’ future. He’s already on the hot seat in the eyes of many and what happens over these next six games will be very telling for what the future holds.
Something else Bucs fans are keeping an eye on is how this Eberflus firing impacts the future of Liam Coen. The mastermind behind Tampa Bay’s offense was already watching his coaching stock rise, but now perhaps the most perfect job for him just opened up and will likely put some pressure on the Bucs to determine how to move forward from here.
Liam Coen is a perfect candidate for Bears to hire after firing Matt Eberflus
Coen is hardly the only candidate for the Bears job, but he checks almost every single box that the team should be looking for in whoever they hire to take over. Everything revolves around Caleb Williams and Chicago being able to develop him into the franchise superstar the team needs him to be, and Coen has already established he can take an offense and make it even better.
Last season Dave Canales helped revive Baker Mayfield’s career and turn Tampa Bay’s offense in the right direction, but it’s Coen’s work that has taken things to another level. Under Coen’s leadership the Bucs have turned into a Top 5 scoring offense and one of the most balanced attacks in the league, not to mention Baker is playing like an MVP and turning in pehaps the best season of his career.
A lot of that is Coen’s handiwork, and it’s why he’s been getting so much attention as of late when it comes to potential head coaching candidates this offseason. If the Bears can’t land Ben Johnson, who will be the top offensive guru teams covet, then Coen is an excellent 1B option.
It’s more than just what Coen has done with Baker this year, it’s how he’s turned Tampa Bay into an absolute machine. Losing Mike Evans and Chris Godwin should have crippled the offense but instead Coen was able to scheme the pieces he had to help the team barely miss a beat. The Bucs’ scoring average went down just a few points despite missing their two best players, which is yet another impressive high mark for Coen.
He’s also done something nobody has been able to for years: fix the run game. Tampa Bay had the worst rushing attack in the league the last two seasons, but Coen has taken a stable of Bucky Irving, Rachaad White, and Sean Tucker and turned it into a Top 10 unit. The Bucs struggled to average more than two years per carry the last few seasons but under Coen rank fourth in the NFL with a 5.0 YPC average.
That’s insane stuff, and also exactly why a team like the Bears would want to poach Coen this offseason. Taking what he’s done with Tampa Bay’s run game and fusing that with developing the talent that Williams has feels like a recipe to get Chicago on the same level as everyone else in the NFC North.
Coen’s chances of getting poached were already high but they went up astronomically with Eberflus officially getting fired. The good news for Bucs fans is that there are other top candidates out there, as Mike Vrabel makes a lot of sense and as does getting Bill Belichick to make his final trick being turning around one of the league’s most iconic franchises.
We’ll have to see how things play out, but it’s starting to look even more likely that the Bucs have another one-and-done offensive coordinator this season.
More Tampa Bay Buccaneers news and rumors