It's already been a far more dramatic offseason for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers than we all expected, and technically, the season isn't even over yet. The Super Bowl is Sunday, and the new league year doesn't begin until March, but there's already been enough drama to make the scriptwriters at Bravo! blush.
Liam Coen's exit from Tampa Bay was about as messy as it gets, and it was something the team very much took personally. After agreeing to return to the Bucs as the richest coordinator in history, Coen ghosted his former team in order to sneak back to Jacksonville to take the Jaguars head coaching job.
Nobody faults him for taking a different job, but the snakey way he went about it is where most folks drew a line. A lot of those people were inside the building at One Buc Place, something we saw reflected in the sheer amount of interference that Coen ran into when trying to poach coaches for his new staff in Duval.
For the most part, Coen was completely shut down, up to and including assistant GM Mike Greenberg bowing out of the running to be the Jaguars' new general manager. Coen managed to land at least one coach he had on his staff last year, though, despite Tampa Bay's best efforts to stop him.
Liam Coen hires former Buccaneers TE coach to his Jaguars staff
On Thursday the streak of the Bucs blocking Coen ended, but not as nefariously as it might seem. While Coen was blocked from hiring coaches under contract with the Bucs, he poached former tight end coach John Van Dam to be the Jaguars' new passing game specialist.
The reason Coen was able to hire him was due to the fact that Van Dam's contract had expired so he was technically a free agent coach.
The #Jaguars are hiring John Van Dam as pass game specialist, source said. He previously held the same title and has been TEs coach for the #Bucs.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) February 6, 2025
It’s the first hire of a Tampa Bay coach by Liam Coen, as Van Dam had allowed his contract to expire.
Van Dam's loss stings in that Coen optically got one over on the Bucs, but it doesn't seem like a major loss to the offensive staff. If Tampa Bay was interested in keeping Van Dam around, they'd have put him under contract, but instead his deal was allowed to expire.
It's not a move exclusive to Van Dam. Tampa Bay let a handful of coaching contracts expire this offseason, notably on the defensive staff. Kacy Rodgers' contract expired and he was allowed to leave for Detroit, and he was replaced by former University of Texas head coch Charlie Strong.
Staff turnover is normal, and Van Dam shouldn't be vilified for leaving when he didn't have a contract in Tampa Bay. It's not quite the victory that some might make it out to be as Coen takes a former coach of his with him to Jacksonville, but it might serve as a natural conclusion to an offseason's worth of drama that was packed into just a few week's time.
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