The Buccaneers and Titans each had an opportunity to make a bold, innovative hire last offseason when they opted to part with their former head coaches. Instead, they hired from within, settling on journeymen coordinators who had few, if any, other viable head coaching opportunities. Both franchises made the conservative decision figuring that the best thing for their young, potential franchise quarterbacks was to maintain the status quo as much as possible as it pertained to that vital position.
Through the first four games of the season, that appears to be a big mistake.
Rest assured, back in January the collective football world met the decisions by Tampa to promote Dirk Koetter and Tennessee to make interim coach Mike Mularkey the full-time hire were met by a collective shrug. Mularkey had been a repeated failure in that role, and Koetter was hardly viewed as an "it" guy or candidate-on-the-rise. However, given the relatively myopic scope of the respective coaching "searches" it was also among the worst-kept secrets in the NFL that these franchises were going to essentially stay in-house with the hiring and neither process ever had the air of a broad, wide-ranging, free-thinking pursuit.
Perhaps both teams will pull out of their malaise -- or perhaps only the Bucs will, since the Titans don't even look good against weak AFC South foes. But the early returns are poor. The clubs have two total wins between them.
Koetter is already lashing out at Jameis Winston after games and leaving him in during blowout losses in horrendous weather conditions. Mularkey is running an offense that looks a few decades behind what's in vogue and chatter is growing about the regression of Marcus Mariota and the lack of weapons around him. It ain't a pretty picture, and it might not get all that much better.
These two organizations could find themselves right back where they were after the 2016 seasons, which isn't entirely shocking under the circumstances.I thought the Bucs would make nice strides due to some defensive staff changes, but that hasn't materialized yet.
Make no mistake, this could have been avoided.
The Titans could have waited for Patriots coordinator Josh McDaniels -- who will be the top coaching candidate this winter -- to get knocked out of the playoffs, for instance, and hired him. Mariota had a particular appeal to the offensive guru, sources said. It would have taken some fortitude and patience and vision to do so, of course. Instead, they ran a fast-and-neat search, dispelled with the general manager candidates who had no interest in hiring Mularkey, according to league sources, and then chose a first-time GM who was fine keeping him on.
The Bucs mulled waiting for an outside candidate like Panthers defensive coordinator Sean McDermott to be knocked out of the playoffs, but opted to give Koetter the job after the Dolphins expressed interest in Koetter for their opening, though few thought he would get the job over the like of Adam Gase. Waiting for McDermott would have taken until after the Super Bowl, but then again, rival Atlanta did just that the year before waiting for then-Seattle coordinator Dan Quinn. And now Quinn has the Falcons flying high.
Instead, these owners chose the path already known, or at least the path they thought they knew, and will need much better results in the final three quarters of the season to have anything to show for it.
"Not that it's right or wrong," said one high-ranking NFL official from a team that made a coaching change in 2016, "but those weren't names that were generating any buzz in any of the searches I was aware of. As coordinators, maybe, but if these two teams don't promote them, they aren't NFL head coaches in my opinion. That doesn't it mean it won't work out, of course."
As a brief aside, consider the results of the Bucs (1-3) and Titans (1-3) thus far, who essentially rewarded mediocrity -- or worse -- with their hires. And, also recall Jacksonville (1-3) and San Diego (1-3), where coaches and/or execs received extensions despite limited results, and same in Buffalo (2-2, extended the GM), Cleveland (0-4, promoted a GM from within), Indianapolis (1-3, extended coach and GM after poor season) and Detroit (1-3, kept the head coach after publicly mulling letting him go).
Those teams are a combined 8-24, and the Bills and Titans have already fired coordinators. And, though Sean Payton has a great pedigree, the Saints (1-3) have been bad for quite some time and he ended up with a massive extension in the offseason. Add in the fact that of all of those teams, only three of the wins have come against teams not mentioned in this paragraph -- the Bills beat the Cardinals and Patriots and the Bucs beat the Falcons -- and you get the sense of just how dire it is and how sometimes, real change is probably the best move forward rather than band-aids and half-transitions.
And, already, some seasons could be slipping away. The poor results with young quarterbacks in Tennessee and Tampa have been downright distressing thus far:
| Pass % | Yards per attempt | TD/INT | QB rating | |
| Marcus Mariota | 58.8% (25th) | 6.8 (22nd) | 4-5 | 73.9 (29th) |
| Jameis Winston | 58.2% (28th) | 6.26 (31st) | 8-8 | 72.9 (31st) |
In a year in which the Panthers, the recent bullies of the NFC South, are regressing rapidly, the Bucs have failed to make an early move, while the Falcons have done just that. Doug Martin's injury has crippled the Bucs' run game, and the defense is back to yielding big plays all over the place. Winston has been under duress far too often and seems like he feels he needs to make repeated big plays himself to stay in games. Whatever mojo he had with Koetter a year ago is missing, and the head coach has been less than warm and fuzzy in his assessment of the first-overall pick from the 2015 draft.
It's even uglier in Nashville, where Mariota has no reliable outlet to deliver the ball besides tight end Delanie Walker. The passing game looks stilted and predictable and while Mularkey has boasted about his "exotic" run schemes, the Titans aren't scaring anyone through the air. The bold flair and consistent flashes that punctuated Mariota's performance as a rookie haven't been the same this season, and the second overall pick from the 2015 draft seems to be languishing. The run game has been productive and perhaps they could ground it and pound it even more than they have been thus far, but neither of these quarterbacks has taken a jump up in his development.
You can't help but wonder, if this continues, what's next for these clubs. Both of their general managers worked previously with McDaniels in New England, it's worth noting, and both could be looking for quarterback whisperer head coaches, as they must be all-in with their passers. The fact that neither the Bucs or Titans pursued him or Gase or Hue Jackson with any vigor a year ago could look more puzzling in hindsight than it even did in real-time, and, trust me, there were no shortage of skeptics even then.
