The Tampa Bay Buccaneers offseason interview ship sails on with several candidates interviewing for the team’s Special Teams Coordinator position.
Bet you forgot about this one, huh?
Special teams is definitely not the sexy position group, but it is very important for football teams to get right. If you recall, it was the ST unit that basically gave the 49ers a win over the Packers in 2021. It can indeed win games. Keith Armstrong was not the most beloved man in Tampa. His ST unit was not very good. So, him retiring could in fact lead the Bucs to getting a lot better on that front. They have already lined up several candidates to take over potentially.
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Keith Tandy is the newest one to be interviewed as far as I can tell. He is already on the coaching staff as a special teams assistant, so it makes sense they would look at him. I wouldn’t exactly be happy for the Buccaneers giving him a promotion since the unit has been bad and I would prefer an outside perspective. That being said, it’s not as if he has done no good. He helped develop Josh Hayes into a really good contributor. If he can just get the coverage unit up to snuff and actually have a return game, I won’t care where he came from.
The two outside candidates are Craig Aukerman and Thomas McGaughey. McGaughey is interesting in that he has been in the NFL for a while. McGaughey got let go at the end of the season by the Giants. He has plenty of experience though as a coordinator, which is a definite plus. The same can be said of Aukerman who has been special teams coordinator for a variety of NFL teams.
However, he was just with the Titans, and they had two blocked punts. In one game. And one of those blocks took out their really good punter in Ryan Stonehouse. I don’t want that.
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The Bucs have the players on ST. Chase McLaughlin has been golden for the Buccaneers as a kicker. Jake Camarda is one of the best punters in the league. However, the units as a whole have always been bad for a while. I remember the Buffalo game where the team constantly started from the 10. That has a lot to do with the coaching on ST. There is definite room for improvement, and I hope it gets better in 2024.
Make sure you check out Devin’s blog at cannoncrunch.wordpress.com.
Cannon Crunch with Devin Sanguinett
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