Unlike Black Monday, which created a handful of openings throughout the league, this Monday was celebratory for teams that made changes to their coaching staff. The Raiders introduced Pete Carroll, Aaron Glenn gave a fiery speech at the podium for the Jets, and down in Duval, Liam Coen made his first official appearance as the new Jacksonville Jaguars head coach.
Coen's crash out with the Bucs was nothing short of spectacular in that it was filled with the type of drama that made writers over at Bravo! blush. He went back on his word, burned nearly every bridge he spent a year building, and went from hero-to-zero in record time.
His introductory press conference with the Jaguars is likely the last time we're going to think about Coen for a while, especially since the Buccaneers are well underway with finding his replacement. It was the true closing of his chapter in Tampa Bay, though, and while fans are starting to move on from what happened it was clear based on his comments that Coen is long past that point of the process.
Everything Liam Coen said about the Buccaneers in his first press conference as Jaguars head coach
It's not what Coen said but what he didn't that serves as one final twist of the knife. Nobody in Tampa Bay was expecting much in terms of courtesy given how they were ghosted by the man at the podiun in Duval on Monday, but Coen made it clear that the Buccaneers were both a stepping stone for him and a place he's not thinking about anymore.
"Look, the opportunity to coach in Tampa was a phenomenal one to get my feet wet in the NFL as the offensive coordinator and I thank them so much for that opportunity," Coen said. "As you continue to do more research and gain and more information as you go, it started to become, you know, more clear with every hour that this was an opportunity that you just can't pass up for so many different reasons, and you ultimately want to do truly what's best for you and your family. And that's what this came down to."
What most non-Jaguars fans were tuning in for was to see if Coen would address the elephant in the room. A few questions were asked about the nature of Coen's exit from Tampa Bay, but both he and Jaguars owner Shad Khan managed to steer clear.
Khan was particularly short when pressed about the timeline of events between Coen agreeing to return to Tampa Bay and him becoming the next Jaguars head coach.
"He's out guy and we got him," Khan said when asked about the process of hiring Coen away from the Bucs. "It's as simple as that."
Coen didn't totally gloss over his time with the Bucs, but he did spend more time talking about his history with Sean McVay and the Los Angeles Rams. That being said, he did give a shout out to his players in Tampa Bay and made a point to call Mike Evans a Hall of Fame wide receiver.
"I will always love and remember those guys in Tampa, my players, those guys, love them to death," Coen said. "But this is an opportunity to also go and do with some new guys, right? And to go reach and touch people, because that's what coaching and teaching is, and that's what this opportunity is all about, and extremely thankful for that."
Read into this how much or how little you want, but the only two Buccaneers that Coen mentioned during his press conference were Evans and head coach Todd Bowles. When asked about how he fixed the run game he credited the players for wanting to be better but referred to Baker Mayfield as 'the quarterback' when discussing his schemes.
That might be a little petty as far as taking it as a slight, but it's hard not to read between the lines given how things went down.
One thing that Coen's press conference with the Jaguars does, besides spill some more tea, is provide closure. The way he left Tampa Bay was about as messy as it gets, but all of that is in the past now. Coen has very clearly moved on, and it's time Bucs fans do the same and look to what is still an incredibly bright future for the team.
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