National Football League

In stunning reversal, Liam Coen spurns Buccaneers to become Jaguars' head coach

Updated Jan. 24, 2025 2:27 a.m. ET

Just like that, Baker Mayfield will have yet another new offensive coordinator.

On Wednesday, it looked like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had avoided that fate, with news that offensive coordinator Liam Coen — who elevated Tampa Bay's offense to a top-five unit in 2024 — had agreed to terms to a new deal that would keep him in Tampa after being courted by the Jacksonville Jaguars for their head coaching job. The three-year extension would make him one of the highest-paid coordinators in the league, reportedly at close to $4.5 million a year.

Then Thursday came and went and the Bucs didn't announce the exciting news of an extension. It all started to unravel Thursday evening — the reason Coen hadn't signed the paperwork was he was in Jacksonville, negotiating a new deal to become the Jaguars' new head coach.

About 24 hours earlier, Coen was scheduled to have his second interview with the Jags but instead withdrew his name from consideration as reports emerged he had agreed to a new deal with the Bucs. Later Wednesday, Jacksonville fired general manager Trent Baalke and reportedly went back to Coen promising he could help select the new GM as part of its push to bring him in.

This was all news to the Bucs, who expected Coen to be in their facility Thursday to make the extension official. Per multiple reports, they couldn't reach him by phone or text until around 5 p.m., when he reportedly talked to Bucs head coach Todd Bowles, who had lobbied for team ownership to give him the substantial raise to keep him in Tampa.

But according to the Tampa Bay Times, Coen told Bowles that one of his children had fallen sick and he'd been at the doctor's office, only briefly mentioning the Jaguars job and saying he wanted to revisit the possibility. By 10:45 p.m., he had notified the team he was accepting the job with the Jaguars — which will reportedly pay as much as $13 million a year.

Coen's reversal took what had been a positive story — keeping a coveted assistant for another year — and instead added to a growing list of departures for the Bucs, who have won four straight division titles. Assistant general manager John Spytek on Wednesday agreed to become general manager of the Raiders, who have former Bucs quarterback Tom Brady as a minority owner. Spytek reportedly signed a five-year deal with the Raiders late Thursday.

Bowles' top two defensive assistants could be leaving as well — defensive line coach and run game coordinator Kacy Rodgers, who has worked with Bowles for 17 seasons with four different teams, is taking the same job with the Lions, and Detroit will be interviewing Bucs linebackers coach and pass game coordinator Larry Foote for its defensive coordinator job. It's also possible that Coen will take some Bucs offensive assistants with him by promoting them to larger roles on his Jaguars staff.

Just two weeks ago, Coen had been candid in talking about the allure of becoming a head coach, but his relative patience to understand that he didn't have to rush at any job, with a job he liked and the promise of more success ahead.

"Yeah, that is a dream," he said. "Does that need to happen when I'm 39 years old and having probably the most fun of my life coaching and working and being here? No, that doesn't mean that needs to occur right now. But yeah, that is the goal. That is absolutely the goal. But like I said before, that goal can hold off for a while here and continue to do what we're doing. That would be pretty special."

It's the second year in a row Bowles has lost a first-year offensive coordinator to a head coaching job. A year ago, Dave Canales was hired to be the Panthers' head coach, and with Coen going to Jacksonville, the Bucs are the first NFL team to lose offensive coordinators to head coaching jobs in back-to-back seasons since the 2013-14 Ravens, who lost Jim Caldwell to the Lions and then Gary Kubiak to the Broncos, where he would win a Super Bowl championship the following season.

In theory, Tampa's OC job is much better than it was a year ago — the Bucs had the worst rushing attack in the NFL in 2023, but they finished in the top five in nearly every category in 2024. The improvement wasn't just Coen, but upgrades to the offensive line, including rookie center Graham Barton, and the arrival of rookie running back Bucky Irving, a consensus All-Rookie selection after rushing for more than 1,000 yards despite sharing the workload for much of the year.

Coen's recent job history suggests it shouldn't be surprising that he moved on from Tampa after only one season. Over the four years prior, he bounced from the Rams to the University of Kentucky back to the Rams and back to Kentucky, in part because he valued being able to be a play-caller in his own offense, as he was in Tampa. At 39, he becomes one of the NFL's youngest head coaches, and he'll get to work with a promising young quarterback in Trevor Lawrence, who is signed to a $275 million contract.

The Bucs, too, have been jilted like this before. Twice, the franchise thought it had a deal with Bill Parcells to become their head coach, in 1991 and 2002, but both times he changed his mind at the last minute. They nearly finalized a deal with Chip Kelly in 2012, only for him to stay at Oregon.

Tampa Bay will now move quickly to find a new offensive coordinator, their fourth in four seasons, a lack of continuity that is all too familiar for Mayfield, who threw for career highs in touchdowns (41) and yards (4,500) with Coen in 2024. Mayfield has already worked with seven offensive coordinators in his seven years in the NFL, so the new hire will be his eighth, a nearly annual rite of learning new offenses and adjusting to new schemes.

The Jaguars, meanwhile, finished 4-13 this past season, but they were 9-8 in each of the two previous seasons, winning the AFC South and a wild-card playoff game in 2022. Finding success with Lawrence, still only 25, will be a priority for Coen. The former No. 1 overall pick was limited to just 10 games this past season because of injury, throwing 11 touchdowns against seven interceptions while winning only two of his starts.

If the Bucs make the same financial commitment they'd budgeted for Coen, they'll have no shortage of worthy candidates to choose from. They could promote from within, giving Mayfield less of a transition to worry about, or look externally to fill a rare opening for a playcalling offensive coordinator with a talented group of players with sustained success in an easy division.

Greg Auman is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He previously spent a decade covering the Buccaneers for the Tampa Bay Times and The Athletic. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregauman.

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