For the fourth straight season, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are entering the offseason looking for a new offensive coordinator. After firing Josh Grizzard, along with five other coaches this week, the Bucs appear to have gotten the process of identifying a replacement underway.
Names like Mike McDaniel and Nate Scheelhasse have been getting a ton of run among fans debating who the team should hire, but neither of those guys is where the Bucs are looking first. Instead, Tampa Bay interviewed former Tennessee Titans head coach Brian Callahan in what will likely be a string of interviews over the next few weeks.
It's not exactly the most exciting name, but the search has to start somewhere. The move to interview Callahan also gives us some insight into what the Bucs are looking for as they attempt to find the right candidate to fix things on offense.
Buccaneers clearly want an offensive coordinator who has one thing Josh Grizzard didn't last season
By interviewing Callahan, the Bucs are telegraphing that they're doing homework on candidates who are experienced playcallers. That's not what they had last season with Grizzard, and Callahan's pedigree suggests Todd Bowles and Jason Licht want someone who won't have to learn on the job the way Grizzard did.
It's impossible to ignore how poorly things went last season for Callahan, though. He was fired just a handful of games into his second year as head coach, and after he had relinquished play-calling duties. He made his name developing Joe Burrow with the Bengals, but it's not exactly exciting that the Bucs' first interview is a guy who had to give up the one thing they're looking for out of the next hire.
Of course, this desire for experience runs counter to what helped the Bucs make two of the best offensive coordinator hires of the decade.
Liam Coen had only called plays as the Rams offensive coordinator for one season, while Dave Canales had never been a coordinator before in his career. Callahan would be the most experienced offensive coordinator the Bucs have hired since this cycle began after 2022, when Byron Leftwich was fired, and sort of tips the team's hand in terms of wanting to speed the process up rather than hope to find another rising star.
That won't stop the team from looking in that direction, as Scheelhaase remains a name to keep an eye on as a candidate who fits the Canales and Coen mold the Bucs found success with. By interviewing Callahan, though, it might mean that the needle tips more to the McDaniel side of things, with Zac Robinson suddenly becoming more of a possibility due to his experience as a playcaller as well.
If nothing else, this at least signals that the Bucs aren't wasting any time getting the process of finding a new offensive coordinator underway. There will be more names over the next few days that surface as candidates, but this could be an earlier indicator that what fans are thinking might not be what the decision makers in Tampa are.