This is a hypothetical. But it's a hypothetical the Buccaneers need to start thinking about right now — before it stops being hypothetical and becomes another front-office autopsy. If Zac Robinson takes over play-calling duties in 2026, revives Baker Mayfield, and this offense cracks the top five in the NFL, Robinson will have head coaching interest in the next hiring cycle. That's not speculation. That's the Liam Coen timeline — replayed frame by frame.
The question isn't whether Robinson is good enough to be a head coach someday. The question is whether the Buccaneers will be smart enough — or brave enough — to make him their head coach before someone else does.
Dave Canales arrived in Tampa as a relatively unknown quarterbacks coach from Seattle. One season with Mayfield, and the Carolina Panthers hired him away to be their head coach. Liam Coen arrived from Kentucky with a single year of NFL play-calling experience. One historic season — top-four in total yards, passing yards, rushing yards, and scoring — and Jacksonville came calling. Coen initially said no. Signed an extension. Then reversed course 48 hours later when the Jaguars fired their GM, and left anyway.
Now Coen is in Jacksonville. His Jaguars finished 13–4 in 2025. He's a Coach of the Year finalist. Trevor Lawrence is an MVP candidate. And the Buccaneers are watching from the outside, going through their fifth offensive coordinator in five seasons, wondering how it keeps happening to them.
Zac Robinson isn't a one-year wonder being handed a high-powered roster. He spent two seasons in Atlanta running a top-10 offense with Kirk Cousins coming off an Achilles tear and Michael Penix Jr. as a rookie. His units ranked ninth in yards per game over those two years. His offensive line surrendered the fourth-fewest sacks in 2025. He coached Bijan Robinson and Chris Lindstrom to back-to-back Pro Bowl selections.
He did all of that with a quarterback situation that was, charitably, a liability. Now he has Baker Mayfield — a quarterback who already trusts him, who pushed for his hiring, who played the best football of his life under this exact McVay system in 2022 when Robinson was his quarterbacks coach in Los Angeles. Robinson knows Mayfield's game better than any coordinator he's had since he got to Tampa. The ceiling on what this offense could be in 2026 is real.
Robinson took just two interviews — Detroit and Tampa Bay. He picked Tampa, in part because of his connection to Mayfield. If the Bucs produce, that connection becomes a reason for every franchise without a quarterback to call.
Todd Bowles is under contract through 2028. The Glazers gave him a three-year extension last summer, despite an 8–9 season that started 6–2 and collapsed 2–7 down the stretch. Joel Glazer's statement at the time was institutional — "continuity," "winning culture," "well positioned for the future." The language of an ownership group that had decided to stay the course.
And Bruce Arians — who won the Glazers a Super Bowl, who brought Bowles to Tampa, who groomed him as a successor — reportedly wants Bowles to remain. That relationship matters to this ownership. The gratitude is real. The loyalty is real.
But here is the thing about loyalty: it costs money. In this case, it could cost the franchise its offensive architect for the second time in two years. The Glazers cannot keep letting offensive masterminds leave the building while keeping a defensive coordinator turned head coach who has never once had a top-10 offense in his tenure.
Robinson's contract runs through the same window as Bowles. If 2026 produces and Robinson draws head coaching interest, the Buccaneers will be back at the same fork in the road — except this time, the candidate won't just be an OC. He'll be the man Baker Mayfield wants running this team.
| Coordinator | Season | What Happened | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Byron Leftwich | 2019–2022 | Super Bowl win. Fired after 8–9 in 2022. | Gone (fired) |
| Dave Canales | 2023 | Unlocked Mayfield. Panthers hired him as HC. | Gone (HC) |
| Liam Coen | 2024 | Top-4 offense. Jaguars hired him as HC. | Gone (HC) |
| Josh Grizzard | 2025 | 21st in total offense. Fired mid-offseason. | Gone (fired) |
| Zac Robinson | 2026 | ? | TBD |
Here is where it gets existential. Baker Mayfield is under contract through 2026. If the Buccaneers believe he is their franchise quarterback — and they should, given what he did in 2024 — then an extension conversation is coming. That extension conversation cannot happen in a vacuum. It has to happen with a coaching structure that makes sense around him.
Mayfield has had four offensive coordinators in four years. He has thrived under two of them — the two who ran McVay-adjacent systems and trusted his intelligence at the line of scrimmage. Robinson is the third coordinator from that tree. If he produces, extending Mayfield while simultaneously letting Robinson walk to become somebody else's head coach is organizational malpractice. You can't ask a quarterback to commit long-term to a franchise that can't hold onto the coaches who unlock him.
The move — if Robinson calls a top-5 offense and the hiring cycle opens up — is to make him the head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Extend Baker. Build around Robinson as the architect. Give this thing a real foundation instead of resetting the coordinator carousel for the sixth time in six years.
You cannot ask a quarterback to commit long-term to a franchise that cannot hold onto the coaches who unlock him.
There is another path, and it deserves to be named plainly. If 2026 is a disaster — if Robinson struggles, if Mayfield regresses, if the Bucs finish below .500 for the second straight year — then this is a full reset. Bowles goes. Mayfield is not extended. The Buccaneers go back to square one with a new quarterback, a new coach, and a new identity.
That scenario exists. It's a legitimate outcome. The 8–9 collapse was not a fluke — it was a team that ran out of answers in the second half of the season and had no offensive identity without the coordinator who built it. If 2026 produces more of the same, the Glazers will eventually have to stop extending loyalty and start making hard decisions.
But the reset scenario is not the plan. The plan is for Robinson to work. The plan is for Mayfield to bounce back. And if that plan works, the Buccaneers need to be ready to act — not with an extension that keeps Robinson as a coordinator, but with a promotion that makes him the face of the franchise's next chapter.
Robinson Has to Be the Last OC Who Doesn't Get the Job.
The Glazers owe Bruce Arians their gratitude. They owe Todd Bowles the respect of honoring his contract. What they do not owe is letting another offensive mastermind walk out the door because loyalty to the past outweighed ambition for the future.
If Zac Robinson calls a top-5 offense in 2026 and Baker Mayfield looks like the quarterback Tampa needs him to be, the answer is clear: promote Robinson, extend Mayfield, build the foundation. Stop resetting. Stop reloading. Stop watching your best offensive minds take jobs in the same division and beat you in January.
The Buccaneers have been here before. They know exactly how this ends if they get it wrong. The only question is whether they've learned anything from watching Liam Coen win 13 games in Jacksonville.