Miami's recently fired head coach, Mike McDaniel, is reportedly willing to take on a new challenge as Tampa Bay's offensive coordinator.
For the fourth straight offseason, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers need a new offensive coordinator.
The circumstances are different than the past two seasons.
Dave Canales and Liam Coen left Tampa Bay to become NFL head coaches.
Josh Grizzard left Tampa Bay because the organization fired him.
But what remains the same from the previous three offseasons is that the team needs a new OC, and two former head coaches could be in the mix.
The Bucs interviewed Brian Callahan, most recently the head coach of the Tennessee Titans, and have also been linked to recently fired Miami Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel.
“I’ve been texting with McDaniel," ESPN reporter Jeff Darlington said on SportsCenter Thursday, the day Glizzard was fired, "and he’s already willing to take on another challenge, whether that’s an offensive coordinator role like the Bucs have, or a head coaching opportunity, perhaps with the Cleveland Browns, or a team like that remains to be seen. But I can tell you that McDaniel and any vacancy for an offensive coordinator job seems like something we should be paying attention to.”
Some Bucs fans are going to naturally be turned off by the way McDaniel's tenure in Miami ended.
After making the playoffs in each of McDaniel's first two seasons, the Dolphins went 8-9 in 2024 and 7-10 this season, leading to McDaniel's dismissal.
But, as with Callahan, it's worth pointing out that the Bucs would be hiring McDaniel to be a coordinator, not a head coach, and the job McDaniel did in his last OC stint is what allowed him to be a head coach.
In McDaniel's one season as the San Francisco 49ers' offensive coordinator, the team went to the NFC Championship Game and Deebo Samuel became a first-team All-Pro.
Something that separates McDaniel from Callahan is that McDaniel did have some success as a head coach, just not enough to stay in Miami for the long haul.
If any team -- even Cleveland -- wants McDaniel to be its head coach, it might be too tempting for him to turn down. But if McDaniel's best course of action is being an offensive coordinator, working at a place where two of the last three OCs have gone on to become division-winning head coaches wouldn't be a bad option.
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