Liam Coen has been a head coach in the National Football League for, what, several hours now, and already he has set impossibly lofty expectations for himself. As we all know, in sports your reputation isn't found in provable success as much as it in convincing people that you were better than you should have been. And for that, Coen can thank the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Jacksonville Jaguars, proving yet again that when you're looking for weird, you're looking at Florida.
Nobody outside The Other Bay Area much knew Coen before last week, but he is credited in that coachly way for the revivification of Baker Mayfield. And sure, why not? Mayfield was authentically great under Coen’s direction this season after nearly washing out of the league in the years prior; the Bucs didn't matter, then they did. Credit spreads like paint when a bad offensive team becomes a good one, and that will tend to benefit the guy who is otherwise only known as a forehead with a hat talking into a Denny's placemat. That’s Coen.
When the Bucs went from the 20s to the top five in total offense, scoring, rushing, passing, third-down conversions, and red zone efficiency, Coen was promoted to official quarterback whisperer after just his first season on the job. He also became the logical inheritor to the crown of "who's the next hot coaching prospect?" This happens a lot, and it generally behooves those hot prospects to move quickly; another year is another chance to curdle or congeal into something much more room-temp and wind up in a job like, say, offensive coordinator at Kentucky, which was Coen's 2023 gig. Coen, in making his move from Tampa to Jacksonville and from coordinator to head coach, became the first of those hot coaching types to convince a team to fire his potential supervisor as a come-on for him to take the job. This suggests to a rank outsider that he had better be Bill Walsh on Day One and only get better from there. "We want you so much that we'll turf your boss" is a call-out that would turn any head.
In this case, Coen had been interviewed by the Jaguars but seemed unimpressed enough to apparently agree to—but, crucially, not sign—a new deal in Tampa that presumably would have made him both the heir apparent to current head coach Todd Bowles and quite rich by coordinator standards. But the Jags, whose records in the Shahid Khan ownership era are 8-8, 5-11, 2-14, 4-12, 3-13, 5-11, 3-13, 10-6, 5-11, 6-10, 1-15, 3-14, 9-8, 9-8 and 4-13, were desperate to have Coen at any price, and apparently went back to him and offered general manager Trent Baalke's head in a cake box as a further incentive. And that—THAT—convinced Coen.
Now, the Jags are a clown show so deeply Bozotic that their existence robs dignity from their owners’ pro wrestling promotion; it was not a surprise that they would be so willing to do this the way they did it. They had already fired head coach Doug Pederson the day after that last 4-13 season, but kept Baalke, the architect of that experience, presumably so that he could find the next Pederson. The Khans, Shad and Tony, apparently decided they had found their Pederson in Coen; Coen seemingly found the weirdly charmless vibe that follows Baalke wherever he goes repellent and demurred; the Khans had to decide who was more important, and did.
This was handled oafishly, but it wasn’t really unusual. Baalke was a polarizing figure in the 49ers' great de-Harbaugh-ing of 2014, taking owner Jed York's side in his feud with Jim as any careerist front office type would. Once Harbaugh got his papers, Baalke supervised the decomposition of that franchise until such time as he finally got fired for being the behind that the public most often kicked. Five years out of football later, Baalke was hired by the Khans and immediately hired Urban Meyer, a decision so preposterous that it continues to reign as the zenith of yahoo Football Man ideas. Pederson came on board after that and put together those two winning seasons but crapped out this year, which left Baalke in charge of running a new coaches car wash. Little did he know he was about to be the one who got washed.
But there were some deftly deceptive dances to be performed first, all of which made everyone involved look just sleazy enough to make them fit for the NFL. According to an all-too-specific report from noted NFL reporter and Ohio State accordionist Albert Breer, this one got weaselly even by NFL ownership standards:
"This one began before Coen did his first interview over video conference with the Jaguars. Knowing it was coming and believing that Coen had a real shot at the job, Buccaneers GM Jason Licht approached his offensive coordinator to ask exactly what it would take for Coen to stay in Tampa. Coen came back with a salary request that would make him the highest-paid coordinator in NFL history, and by a healthy margin. Licht took the proposal back to the Glazer family, who own the Buccaneers, and got it approved. He then went to Coen, telling him he had his number, that the team loved him, and badly wanted him to stay, but didn’t want to negotiate anymore. Coen then met with the Glazers, who encouraged him to take the first interview with the Jaguars to, at the very least, get the experience of having done one."
Coen did, and did well enough to land among the Jags’ final three candidates. In Breer’s telling of it, Coen’s offer from Tampa Bay stipulated that he withdraw from Jacksonville’s candidacy before that second round of interviews; Coen asked for more money in exchange for dropping out of the Jaguars process, the Glazers demurred and asked for an answer on their offer by Monday; Coen asked for an extension until Tuesday, then Wednesday.
But back to Al.
"It wasn’t long after that the news of (Baalke's firing) surfaced, which changed everything about Jacksonville’s pursuit of Coen. On Wednesday afternoon, with Coen expected to be at 1 Buccaneer Place to sign his deal, efforts by team brass to get (hold) of Coen failed. Around 5 p.m., Coen called back to ask Licht if it was O.K. if he came in Thursday morning to sign the contract—rather than doing it that night—and Licht told him that was fine. Around 10 a.m. Thursday, the Buccaneers still hadn’t heard from Coen, and assistant GM Mike Greenberg had to reach out to him on a contract for another offensive coach that was being finalized. That call went unanswered, too, as did additional attempts by Licht and Bowles. Finally, at 11 a.m., Coen’s agent got back to the Bucs and informed them that his client was tending to a personal matter. Tampa waited a few hours, and then Licht, Bowles and other staffers tried, again, to get ahold of Coen. During the 5 p.m. hour, Coen called Bowles and told him he was still dealing with his personal matter. He also told him that things had materially changed in Jacksonville, and that he was going to travel there to explore the opening. Within an hour of that phone call, a Bucs staffer got tipped off by someone in the Jaguars’ facility that Coen was already in the building."
The Jags just needed Coen's deal to remain a secret so they could satisfy the empty husk of the NFL’s Rooney Rule, which was met when they interviewed Raiders Defensive Coordinator Patrick Graham. And then the leaks began, including the one about the "personal matter" that Coen's wife Ashley found objectionable. Wading into the backed-up cesspool that is X, she wrote in her husband's defense that they had taken their son to a hospital to see a specialist for their child’s autoimmune disease. She closed her message with a not-very-cryptic "Please don't spread misinformation and assume because you heard one side," which leads a sensible person to wonder if that side wasn't being provided by the jilted Bucs.
All this Breerian detail is just to show how desperate the Jaguars were to undo a done deal with a team that doesn't impact them in any way and seal another for themselves, even if doing so meant firing someone much higher on the pecking order. Put another way, Liam Coen doesn't have just the minimal bars of Meyer and Pederson to clear, but also the still-burning skull of Baalke and the rage of the double-dealt Bucs as his one-day legacy. Having the throw-weight to get your titular boss canned as a part of your deal is an impressive way to start one's head coaching career, but it suggests that this hire better work a hell of a lot better than Urban bleeping Meyer.
And Coen has to do all this baggage-toting—has to make all this worth it—while working with the Jaguars' roster and proud history of single-digit first-round draft picks. If only the Jags had done it the way the Cowboys and Raiders are—by going after coaching candidates (Brian Schottenheimer and Pete Carroll) without any competing offers or leverage. Life is so much easier in the aisles that don't have other shoppers.
