One of the most bizarre and unprecedented situations in NFL history played out on Thursday night with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the center of it all. In little over 24 hours, Liam Coen went from bowing out of the running for the Jaguars head coaching job to getting a massive pay raise to return to the Bucs to using it all as leverage to get what he wanted out of a desperate billionare owner in Jacksonville.
It's Catch Me If You Can meets Ocean's 11 meets a Terrifier movie all wrapped up into one truly bonkers moment for the Bucs and the league. There have been changes of heart by players and coaches in the past -- from Josh McDaniels and the Colts to Ben Johnson and the Commanders -- but the way this all played out truly takes the cake.
It's an insane timeline of events that gets wilder with each new detail about how everything went down emerges.
Details of how Liam Coen stabbed the Bucs in the back keep getting worse and worse
It all started on Wednesday morning when Coen dropped out of the running to be the Jaguars head coach and agreed to return to Tampa Bay as one of the league's highest-paid coordinators. The move was celebrated by Bucs fans but almost everyone else saw it as an indictment of Shad Khan's decision to not fire general manager Trent Baalke and remove what many saw as a road block to the Jaguars landing a top candidate.
Not long after Coen agreed to return to the Bucs, Jacksonville fired Baalke and everything started to change -- and get really weird.
Despite agreeing to a new contract with Tampa Bay, Coen never showed up to sign it and make things official. That's not hyperbole; Coen never arrived at the team facility and kept team officials waiting on him with his contract in hand.
According to multiple reports, Buccaneers officials were unable to contact Coen when they called him wondering where he was. As it turns out, he had flown back to Jacksonville to meet with Shad Khan and Jaguars officials in person to try and finalize a deal to become the team's head coach.
Multiple text messages and phone calls were made to Coen and I’m told Tampa Bay has heard nothing. https://t.co/fgoCLPlUM1
— Dianna Russini (@DMRussini) January 23, 2025
That's pretty damning all on it's own, but somehow things got even crazier and messier as we learned more about the situation. Everything about what was being reported suggested Coen had combined his new deal with the Bucs and the firing of Baalke as leverage to get a better deal from the Jaguars, and he went about doing this by cutting Tampa Bay out completely and ghosting them as they waited for him to show up.
Adam Schefter reported that Coen had indeed informed head coach Todd Bowles about wanting to circle back to the Jaguars interest, but ESPN's Jenna Laine later clarified that whatever conversation the two had happened 40 minutes before that became public knowledge.
Liam Coen called Todd Bowles about 40 minutes ago about the Jacksonville job, I’m told. So this is why the Bucs front office did not hear from him all day, and why Coen said he did call Bowles.
— JennaLaineESPN (@JennaLaineESPN) January 23, 2025
But wait, there's more.
As bad as all that looked, Tampa Bay Times reporter Rick Stroud dropped one of the wildest twists of the entire saga. He confirmed that a phone conversation indeed happened, but Coen explained that the reason he had been unreachable was due to having a sick child he needed to take to the doctor's office.
To be clear, the Liam Coen contacted head coach Todd Bowles around 5 p. m. Thursday. He said he had been with one of his kids, who had taken ill, at a doctors office. He mentioned the Jaguars situation only briefly, saying he wanted to look back into it.
— Rick Stroud (@NFLSTROUD) January 24, 2025
There's shady and then there's whatever Liam Coen pulled on the Buccaneers.
As far as what turned the tide, The Athletic's Dianna Russini reported that the Jaguars made Coen a Godfather offer that involved giving him the power to hand-pick the next general manager, as well as paying him on the level of what the Bears gave Ben Johnson. For the record, reports are that Johnson is getting $13 million from Chicago. Say what you will about the way Coen went about this whole situation, but that's the sort of power head coaches simply aren't afforded, let alone a first-timer.
None of the excuses how Coen lied to the Bucs, although MMQB's Albert Breer offered some insight into why there was such secrecy. According to Breer, the Bucs offered Coen a three-year deal that would make him one of the highest-paid coordinators in the league. We all knew that much, but the deal was apparently contingent on Coen not taking a second interview with the Jaguars which seems to be why he ghosted the Bucs and wasn't honest about his intentions.
It's truly a disappointing way for his time in Tampa Bay to come to an end, as there had been so much to celebrate over the course of the year. Coen helped turn the Bucs' offense into one of the best units in the league, fixed the team's rushing attack, and was lionized by fans who went so far as to want Todd Bowles fired to ensure the train stayed on the tracks.
Little did we know how spectacularly things would come undone in the end.
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