For the second straight season, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are in danger of losing their offensive coordinator to a head coaching job elsewhere in the league. Last year, Dave Canales parlayed an impressive season into a job coaching the Carolina Panthers, and many are expecting the same for Liam Coen.
The logic makes sense; if Canales got a head coaching job and Coen is dancing circles around the job he did then the candidacy almost speaks for itself.
Canales cracked the door last season but Coen has blown it off the hinges. Tampa Bay's league-worst rushing attack is now among the best in the NFL and has an explosive rookie leading the way. Bucky Irving has been a revelation, and Rachaad White has continued to take strides as a dangerous weapon. It's more than just the way Coen has reinvented the Bucs' run game, and he's managed to navigate injuries to key players to barely miss a beat.
Chris Godwin was lost for the season and Mike Evans missed three games, yet the Bucs haven't averaged fewer than 25 points per game. It's been a truly masterful job and it's not hard to see why Coen's head coaching stock has soared over the last few weeks -- and it's only getting stronger.
Liam Coen's head coaching buzz is officially through the roof
NFL analyst Peter Schrager, who has been pretty plugged into the Bucs as one of the lone members of the national media willing to back them, gave Coen some serious praise during the NFL on FOX pregame show this Sunday.
Schrager compared Coen's head coaching candidacy to that of Ben Johnson, which is a connection that won't be lost on teams looking to find the next hot offensive mind on the market. Coen's history with Sean McVay, a popular coaching tree teams like to pluck from, also boosts his stock.
"With all of the glow and press about Ben Johnson in Detroit, Liam Coen, in his first year with Tampa, has gotten better numbers than Dave Canales got out of that offense last year," Schrager said. "He was with Sean McVay for many years in LA, and there are always positive vibes around that. So while everyone is talking about Ben Johnson as one of these head coaching candidates, watch for Liam Coen."
All of this is valid praise, but it's also why everyone is so nervous about Coen getting poached this offseason. Canales leaving was a tough enough but how much better Coen has done would make his departure one that fractures the fan base. There's already irrational calls for Todd Bowles to be fired and replaced by Coen, which is a coversation that would only happen if the Bucs flamed out and missed the playoffs.
More realistically Tampa Bay is going to have to figure out a way to keep Coen here without removing Bowles, and that's not as impossible as some alarmists might say. Bringing up Ben Johnson implies that Coen will get hired away but the better comparrison might be to what happened last year when Lions fans were having the same worry.
Last offseason both Johnson and Houston's Bobby Slowik were rumored to leave for head coaching jobs but they both remained where they were. It's not outside the realm of possibility for Coen to run things back and both try to win a Super Bowl next season and increase his stock.
Much like Johnson, if Coen waits then he could only become an even hotter name on the market and could line himself up to choose his pick rather than needing to compete with other candidates.
Tampa Bay giving him a raise makes a ton of sense and could be enough to make him stay. Everything is on the table at this point but Coen is in no rush to leave -- at least that's what he's been saying -- and the idea of him staying even though he's such a hot candidate isn't something that should be brushed off.
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