Welcome in two Bucks Insider presented by Verizon Casey Phillips. Here was senior writer and editor Scott Smith, And we have an offensive coordinator to talk about, and did his one, Liam Cohen. He's gotten introduced to the media this week at his first press conference, met some of the players around the building. So tell me for you initial thoughts on what this hiring means to the team and to the offense.
Well, the Bucks did a very thorough search. I think they interviewed seven candidates and Liam was near the end, but I think they had planned on interviewing them all along. It was just how they were handling it at the University of Kentucky, and I think they felt he was well. Coach said he was the best fit for what they
wanted to do offensively. So Coach Bowles and his staff went into this search with an idea of the offensive philosophy that they wanted to follow, and they felt that Liam was the best choice to probably provide some bit of continuity between what they were doing last year under Dave Canalis. A lot of good things, but how do you continue that when you're coordinators and changing systems and
that starting over from ground zero? And now you have a guy that has a lot of the same sort of background as Dave Canals working with Sean McBay and the Rams. Dave Canos didn't do that, but Shane Waldron and the connection and all that. So I think it was the best way to have continuity, but also a guy that they felt really had the same philosophy as to how to run an offense.
And part of that philosophy is something he talked about in his press conference. And I think it's probably gonna make a lot of the players pretty happy.
Excuge, man, when you have playmakers, life's a lot more fun. I mean, like I said, you can call any play in the world. But when you can just call a slant or a hitch or an omaha and the ball could potentially go in the end zone, er you call a go ball in those fifty to fifties are now eighty twenties or seventy thirties, that's not anything I can coach. And so when you have those type of players, man,
the game is a lot more fun. And that's ultimately what football is, right, It's about like it's about players, not plays. But if we can put them in the position to be successful with talent, you know, usually good things happen. So I couldn't be more excited to get to work with those guys. Man, they seem like really good people and workers, just like everybody that I've heard in this building. So really excited to get to work with those guys.
So players not plays, which is interesting from a play caller too.
Yeah, well, I think what he's saying is the job of an offensive offensive coordinator is not to wow everybody with your play design and your play calling. Improve that no matter who you ghet the ball to, you can make you can run an offense. It's not about you, even though it is yours. And that was important to him that this is his, whether good or bad, it the buck stops with him. The job is to get the ball to your best playmakers as much as possible,
and especially in key moments. And he said at one point that when he's in a game, he has a play calling you know, the play call sheet that they all hold up on the back. He has boxes for those players and he can look at that and go, Okay, we haven't done this to him. We need to get the ball to him this many times. We need to
get to him, you know what I'm saying. So it's a reminder to him to get the ball in the hands of and when you have Mike Evans and Chris Godwin and Rashad White and Kate Ott and even it's a good idea, right yeah.
Yeah, And even he was saying it almost didn't matter what the defenses would be or the coverages would be. That it was like, sometimes sometimes you're just gonna get You're gonna try and get it to them. Who cares what they're doing. We want to get it into our play caller's hands, which is great. And one of those players that he hopes is maybe making some plays for him is Baker Mayfield because they do have some familiarity with each other. Right.
Baker Mayfield was claimed by the Rams in that twenty twenty two season where Liam Cohen was the Rams offensive coordinator. He wasn't a play caller. That was the year after they won the Super Bowl. Matt Stafford got hurt, Cooper
Cupp got hurt, They started four different quarterbacks. It was just kind of a lost season offensively, and by the time they claimed Baker off waivers in early December, they weren't having a lot of fun, and Liam said Baker immediately brought the fun back to the whole team, he brought competitiveness back on the practice field, and those two in a pretty short amount of time formed a pretty good relationship. And so Liam coming here, he said it was one of the attractions that he had a shot.
Now he's the potential to work with Baker Mayfield because as we know, he's a pending free agent, so a new contract has to be done before that happens. But I think Liam came here with an optimism that it would happen. And of course Baker has said on multiplications that he likes it here and would like to stay here. So hopefully they can work that out because that was a draw for Liam Cohen.
Yeah, and then I know, but not only is he going to be planning to put Baker in the best spot, he definitely does still want to continue the emphasis on the run game that the team had been working on and the growth in that area. So what did you hear about how he wants to continue the growth there?
Well, Dave Canalis wanted to have a balanced offense, and to his credit, he did in terms of play calling. He kept it very bounced and he stuck to his word that he would not abandon the run. But at the end of the day, the Bucks run offense was still at the bottom of the league in terms of
yards per game. So how do you fix that. There's a number of ways, but one I found intriguing that Liam Cohen said that hopefully the Bucks could get to is giving the quarterback and the center a little bit more autonomy at the line of scrimmage before the snap. So you have a lot of plays that he said, were on a can, which means you have on the front of the can, like a can of soda. On the front of the can, you have the play you
want to run on the back of the can. There's a companion play that you can go to that one instead, and the Rams have that on ninety five percent of their plays. Liam said he didn't know if how soon the Bucks could get to that, but if you can have your quarterback out there recognizing defenses, understanding what the defenses are trying to do to you, and being able to put your run plays against better looks, that will
improve the game. So it may take a little while to get there, but that could help quite a bit.
And I know you mentioned that Liam Cohen, You mentioned Kentucky and the Rams, and some of these stops tell us a little bit about his path to this point.
So he had three years on Sean mcvay's staff, I think there would be eight twenty eighteen to twenty twenty and a couple positions like assistant wide receiver, assistant quarterback, and then he got hired by Kentucky to be their offensive coordinator, which is something he always wanted to do,
have his own offense call plays. But then the Rams were interested in hiring him back, and he went back to Los Angeles in twenty twenty two because, as he said, he wanted to help out his friend Sean McVay and he wanted to be involved in that. But when he was there in Los Angeles, he realized what he was missing, that he wanted to be a play caller, that he wanted to be running an offense that was his. So when he got a shot to go back to Kentucky,
that's why he did that. But now this opportunity arrives and it's really his lifelong dream to be calling plays in the NFL.
And one of the interesting things about the Bucks offense in recent years is how Chris Godwin has been used outside slot. We've seen he can have success anywhere. He's an incredibly talented wide receiver. What insight have we gotten into how this new offensive coordinator wants to use it.
It looks like Liam Cohen will want to use Godwin a lot more like he was in the Tom Brady era when he was really a weapon in the slot. And he just says he can be such a weapon in there. And as you said, last year, Dave Canalis decided to use him a lot of different ways and a lot more outside and it still worked. He still had roughly the same amount of yards as a year before. But if you look at some of the numbers, you can see that he's had so much, so much success
working out of the slot. And look at the percentages in the percentage calumn there, that's the number of percentage of plays that Chris ran out of the slot or tied against the line, because we know what a great run blocker he is when he's there. See the big drop from seventy two percent to thirty nine percent, And if you look at it, his catch percentage went way down and his yak went way down. Now, that's a function of the different type of plays that you're running.
But if you look at that year in twenty twenty one, when he caught seventy percent, i mean, played seventy percent in the slaughter tight almost eighty yards per game and six orn and thirteen yak, which was among league leaders. That's the kind of thing that Chris Godwin can do. And Liam doesn't have to just guess from looking at a few pieces of tape. He could look at three years and know that this can work.
That's going to be interesting. Well, not only did the Bucks hire a new offensive coordinator, but they had a couple guys having fun at the Pro Bowl and make it some making some moves. At the Pro Bowl, we had some stars out there. We had Baker Mayfield and Tristan Wurf's, who of course are just little besties stepbrothers photo re enactment. I loved everything about watching the two of them have so much fun at the Pro Bowl games.
And then they both did really well in their respective areas that we saw Baker just lighten it up in the game. And then we also saw and of course hears him getting the offensive MVP of the games, and we saw Tristan using that strength that we know him so well for to help the NFC win the Move the Chains event.
Yeah, the move chains when where they had to move all this weight off and then go to the other side and pull the sled together. Tristan was the first one done. He was just waiting on the other side for his other guys. But then they managed to win, and then Baker won the precision precision Passing event. And then it was a little bit confusing to me when I was looking back at it, because I saw the end of the flag football game and I saw the score and the NFC seemed to win, and then I
look at the box score in the AFC one. But it's because it was a composite score, so you get points for winning the different events, right, Yes, I didn't quite quite realize that at first. So, because he won Precision Passing and got the NC a bunch of points, and then he had some big touchdown passes in the flag football game, he was the overall of MV which is cool. It's kind of like a nice little cap
on this comeback season. Yes, for a Baker who exceeded almost everybody's externally expectations, during the season and then you see, oh, Baker Mayfields in the Pro Bowl, and then yeah, Baker Mayfield's in the Pro Bowl. He's also the Star.
Yeah, I love that. That was great for him and for Tristan as well. So you know, we've hired the offensive coordinator. Another open spot we ended up having to fill with special teams coordinator as Keith Armstrong retired. So where do we kind of stand at this point with that job and what his retirement could mean.
Well, the Bucks have cast a wide net, just like they did with the offensive coordinate position. They interviewed six people Giants former Giants coordinator Thomas McGahee for former Titans coordinator Craig Ackerman. I'm trying to do this for a memory. Yes, a Saint's assistant, Phil Galliano, former Seahawks coordinator Larry Izzo Iowa, the University of Iowa, special teams coordinator LeVar Woods, and of course the internal Canada Keith Tandy, who's done good
things for the Buccaneers the last four years. Now, there are reports that the Buccaneers are close to a decision on that, but we don't have any anything official on that, so we kind of have to stop there, but these are the candidates we've talked about so far.
All right, well, that's going to be really interesting to see how that shakes out. Special teams was an interesting group to watch. I mean, Chase McLaughlin had a great year and Jake Camarti coming into some talented guys.
Yeah.
One thing though, that coach Bole said in his day after the season into press conferences that we want more out of our return game. And Devin Tompkins was like fifteenth in the NFC or in the NFL and punt return average, so that was fine. But the one thing the Buccaneers haven't had any very long time is that explosive play on either punts or kickoff returns. You see here the last kickoff return touchdown or punt return touchdown for the Bucks was twenty ten. That's the biggest draft
in the NFC NFL right now. As you can see, Wow, most teams have had one in the last few years. So that's interesting. Some of that I think is luck. I mean, yes, you just didn't quite break one. But that's something that the Bucks would obviously like to add occasionally, a really big explosive play on punter kickoff return.
So I know we're also going to each week here on this show look ahead to the draft and especially the first round pick and what we think is a potential position that they could address at that spot. So I know that we talked about a different one this last show that today we're going to talk about the safety position. So how much do you see this being something that they might address that high in the draft.
Yeah, I don't know first round because if you look at the prospects available, the safety position isn't really very top heavy, and there's some other needs and Bucks might address, but maybe early on Day two because you really don't have a lot settled there. Obviously, you have an All Pro, first team All Pro. It's a good place to start with Antoine Winfield. But at the other spot it was really by committee. We used four different guys at safety.
Antoine pretty much played every snap, of course, because you've never take him off the field. But if you look here, you had Ryan Neil, who is the main starter, but not the entire season. He was good in run support for the most part. D Delaney is a ballhawk. That's why they brought him in in some place. Keava Meriwether was the undrafted rookie is a good tackler out there, and then they even tried Zion McCollum because that allowed them to put their three best cover guys on the
field at the same time. But I don't think there's necessarily one answer there. And then if you also look at the fact that the Bucks have to get Winfield in their contract, now, I think that they probably will, but that has to be done. Ryan Neil's contract is up, de Delaney's contract is up, and Zion McCollum is likely to spend most of next year at cornerback, so you could really use another impact player and guy that can play every down in safety. I think, all.
Right, well, that is going to do it for us. On this edition of Bucks Insider presented by Verizon, stay tuned for all of the coverage of our new offensive coordinator and some of the other positions the Bucks are still looking to fill. On buccaneers dot Com m