Category: Tampa Bay Buccaneer

 

Liam Coen mostly stayed away from mentioning the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in his press conference with the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Liam Coen mostly stayed away from mentioning the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in his press conference with the Jacksonville Jaguars. | James

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.

 

 

 

ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that Liam Coen feels like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers forced him to sign a contract he never wanted to sign before leaving to be the Jaguars head coach.

ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that Liam Coen feels like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers forced him to sign a contract he never wanted to sign before leaving to be the Jaguars head coach.

Who needs reality television when you have whatever the heck is happening between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Liam Coen? His fall from grace in the eyes of Bucs fans has been stunning to watch, as Coen went from a golden child who a vocal part of the fan base wanted to replace Todd Bowles as head coach to a villain that united everyone against him in the matter of a day.

 

Coen bowed out of the running to become the Jaguars head coach on Wednesday and agreed to return to Tampa Bay on a record-breaking contract for a coordinator. He never showed up to sign that deal, though, and instead secretly met with Shad Khan to restart negotiations to become Jackonsville’s next head coach.

 

In between, Coen reportedly failed to return calls and texts from Buccaneers officials who were trying to get in contact with him when he never showed up to the team facility to sign his contract. By the end of Thursday, Coen had agreed to become the Jaguars head coach and in the process gave us one of the wildest moments in NFL history.

 

Just because his deal in Jacksonville is done doesn’t mean this is the end of the story. As if the drama in the moment wasn’t crazy enough, the mud-slinging fallout between the Bucs and Coen is only just beginning.

 

Adam Schefter drops new details about Liam Coen’s decision to back out of his deal with Buccaneers

Adam Schefter stopped by the Pat McAfee Show and dropped some more details on the fallout of everything that happened. One of the biggest revelations was that he’s heard Coen’s camp feels like the Buccaneers forced them to take a deal that would make him the highest-paid coordinator in NFL history.

 

“He felt like the Buccaneers, right or wrong I’m just telling you how he feels, strong armed him into a deal,” Schefter said. “[The Buccaneers] say they reached out multiple times, he says he was in touch with Todd Bowles and informed him of his decision to interview with the Jacksonville Jaguars. Again, there are two different versions of this.”

 

He followed that comment up by saying the Buccaneers are beside themselves that Coen is trying to spin this as though they should be so lucky to get to offer him the sort of deal they did. For the record, Albert Breer reported that Coen was offered a three-year contract that would have made him the highest-paid coordinator in NFL history, which confirms how hard the Bucs went after their guy to keep him.

 

It also shows a continued pattern for the team when it comes to taking care of their own. We saw that last year when both Baker Mayfield and Mike Evans returned on deals that did right by them without trying to lowball guys who have been important to the franchise, and their willingness to take those deals shows how strong the relationships that get built inside of the building are.

 

That’s not the case with Coen, which is what makes the way things went down so stunning. It’s not that he decided to take a deal elsewhere, it’s that he went about it like a teenager trying to hide something from their parents. That part is what has everyone scratching their heads.

 

Unless you’re the Buccaneers, as Schefter noted they’re doing a little more than simply scratching their heads over what happened.

 

“Since the turn of the century, I don’t remember the last time I heard one team this hot and bothered about a coach taking another deal,” Schefter said. “[Coen’s] side is like we didn’t do anything wrong we were exploring our rights, we let them know. Again, you believe what you want to believe, I’m just the messenger giving you all side of the story.”

 

It’s a truly messy situation that has everyone involved caked in mud. Coen reportedly told the Buccaneers that his sick child was why he wasn’t answering their calls, while other reports suggest he had been in Jacksonville since Wednesday afternoon shortly after the team fired general manager Trent Baalke.

 

We still haven’t even scratched the surface of getting to the bottom of what really happened. What we do know, based on everything that is still coming out about this, is that things will probably get a lot messier before all is said and done.

 

 

 

 

The Bucs were either a victim of an attempted shakedown by a valued assistant coach or the Bucs tried to strong-arm a soon-to-be new NFL head coach.

 

The truth very likely stands in the middle.

 

Readers of JoeBucsFan.com have likely noticed that Joe has used the word “allegedly” several times the past 24 hours because nobody with the Bucs or Jaguars went on the record about what happened between the Bucs and former Bucs offensive coordinator/new Jags head coach Liam Coen. So Joe doesn’t truly believe every report of what happened.

 

As uber NFL insider Adam Schefter of BSPN pointed out on “The Pat McAfee Show” today, there are wildly different versions of what went down.

 

But the result is clear: Coen is now Jags head coach. And per Schefter, the Bucs are downright irate about this, thinking they got stabbed in the back.

 

“Liam Coen has his thoughts and the Buccaneers have their thoughts,” Schefter said. “And you can believe whatever you want. I can tell you there’s two different schools of thought.

 

“I would just say this: In 20 years, this century, since the turn of the century — I don’t remember the last time I’ve heard one team this hot and bothered by a coach taking another deal.”

 

Someone with the Bucs and likely someone with the Jags is surely texting his or her fingers off with Albert Breer, Diana Russini and Schefter. Otherwise, where would they get all the alleged details of what happened inside the walls of One Buc Palace the past week?

 

The alleged misdeeds even include suggesting Coen used a sick child as a shield to dodge the Bucs and take a clandestine trip to Jacksonville.

 

That’s a pretty heavy accusation and dastardly if true.

 

“There are a lot of different versions of what is going down,” Schefter said. “I can just tell you that, I don’t remember when was the last time I heard a team that irate over a coaching decision.”

 

As the creator, curator and overall guru of Pro Football Talk, the great Mike Florio, likes to point out, silence invites speculation.

 

And unless or until someone (Jason Licht, Todd Bowles, Shad Con Khan, Coen) goes on the record and explains what transpired, Joe can’t be confident fully buying all the details of these reports.