As the Tampa Bay Buccaneers prepare for a Wild Card matchup with the Washington Commanders, most of the league is trying to figure out how to fix what went wrong. Specifically, it seems a ton of teams are looking squarely at the Bucs to try and replicate their success by plucking from the fruits of their success.
Liam Coen has been a top head coaching candidate for almost the entire season, and attention has turned to the front office and the staff Jason Licht has put together. The way Tampa Bay has bounced back from the retirement of Tom Brady — something that was supposed to set the team back — is why everyone including the man himself could turn to the Bucs for some help.
On Thursday the Raiders fired general manager Tom Telesco, which creates an opening that Brady might turn to the friends he has in Tampa Bay to help fill.
John Spytek could be on Las Vegas’ radar thanks to Tom Brady’s connections to Tampa Bay
No formal interview has been requested, but assistant general manager John Spytek getting a call from the Raiders feels like a certainty. In fact, now that Las Vegas has cleaned out and fired both Antonio Pierce and Tom Telesco, it wouldn’t be surprising if the Raiders showed an interest in a number of key members of Tampa Bay’s coaching staff and front office.
Mike Greenberg has drawn interest from the New York Jets, and Liam Coen is one of the hottest head coaching candidates on the market. If Ben Johnson indeed bypasses the coaching circuit for a second straight year, it might raise Coen’s stock even more, and it’s not crazy to think that a team would pair him with someone already working for the Bucs as his general manager.
It’s early, but that place could be Vegas. At the very least it’s hard to not see Tom Brady leveraging the connections he has with the Bucs to try and get some of the talent that helped him win a Super Bowl to his new team.
Spytek has flown under the radar a bit as far as the hype around Coen and Greenberg, but he’s also getting interest around the league. After the Titans fired Ran Carthon, Spytek was instantly linked to the job and it’s and attractive one at that. Unlike the Jets or Raiders, Tennessee isn’t in a gnarly salary cap situation and has the No. 1 pick in the draft.
Even if a team did have a nasty salary cap situation, that wouldn’t scare Spytek away. He’s been part of a front office that navigated through choppy waters in the post-Brady era and has helped set the team up for success.
Brady would be a fool if he didn’t want a guy like that in charge of fixing the Raiders, and he has an inside track with having so many friends still in the building at One Buc Place.
The good news is that Tampa Bay can afford to lose either Greenberg or Spytek — or both. Jason Licht has such a fantastic structure of talent in place that another eager rising star could use the void as a chance to advance their career, and the Bucs have quickly become a place that can advertise itself as a springboard to other candidates around the league.
Tom Brady ended up helping usher in a new era for the Bucs when he left, and he might be about to help do it again if he poaches the front office.
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