When Todd Bowles moved from his defensive coordinator post to the head coaching offense in 2022, he essentially retained the staff that had been assembled by his predecessor and former boss, Bruce Arians, including offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich. That made sense; the Bucs had finished second in both yards and scoring in 2021 after ranking seventh in yards and third in scoring during the 2020 Super Bowl season.

However, the Bucs went 8-9 in Bowles' first season at helm – albeit with another division title at the end – and their offense slipped to 23rd in yards and 20th in points. Tom Brady retired after the season and the Buccaneers went for an offseason reset, signing quarterback Baker Mayfield and hiring Seattle assistant Dave Canales to replace Leftwich. It went well, particularly in regards to how Mayfield played, and the Bucs went 9-8 and won a third straight NFC South crown. Unfortunately, it went a little too well, as the Carolina Panthers poached Canales for their head coaching job – hoping to get the same type of quarterback resuscitation magic with Bryce Young – leaving Tampa Bay in search of another new offensive architect.

Enter Liam Coen. Though he came to the Bucs directly from the University of Kentucky, where he was the offensive coordinator in both 2021 and 2023, Coen had also spent four years working under Sean McVay with the Los Angeles Rams. He was the Rams' offensive coordinator in 2022, though McVay retained playcalling duties.

Now, for the first time, Coen is where he has dreamed of being since he was a young son of a football coach: In complete charge of an NFL offense. He has had a couple months to the installation of his playbook installed during the Buccaneers' offseason program, but that effort will intensify significantly next week when the team begins training camp. How well he succeeds in building a balanced offense that gets much more out of the ground game after two straight 32nd-ranked finishes will go a long way towards determining if the Buccaneers can capture a fourth straight division title.

Buccaneer fans will have an opportunity to see this process in action during the 10 training camp practices open to the public. How much is revealed in the three preseason games remains to be seen. There's an advantage to having a new coordinator and a new scheme, at least early in the season, because opponents don't have much information to go on as they prepare their defenses.

That said, we can definitely glean some information from what Coen and some other coaches and players said during the offseason program. Among the things we should expect to see in a Coen offense that might differ from what the Buccaneers have done in recent seasons include:

* More presnap motion and shifts. Much more, in fact. There are many potential advantages to presnap motion, including clues as to whether the defense is in man or zone; more moving parts for the defense to figure out; better blocking numbers for wide zone runs and screens; more free releases at the line for pass-catchers in motion. This all part of what has been called an "illusion of complexity" in McVay's schemes, the ability to run a wide variety of plays out of presnap looks that appear to be the same. Wide receiver Chris Godwin noted that the players are learning a lot of different terminology in order to get to those different plays from similar looks. The Bucs used motion on 48.0% of their plays last year; for reference, the Rams used it on 71.9% of their plays.

* Speaking of Godwin, Coen made it clear that he wants to put one of his two star receivers back into a primary slot roll, where he was so productive during the Brady era. Godwin went from taking 60% of his snaps in the slot in 2022 to just 32% last year, and while he was still productive (83 catches for 1,024 yards and two touchdowns), his yards after catch numbers went down and he wasn't able to provide as much of the very useful inline blocking he had been known for in previous seasons.

* More "11" personnel. The Bucs used "12" personnel, which features two tight ends on 35.7% of their plays last year. If we are using Coen's Rams background as a guide, that should go down dramatically this season. In 2023, the Rams only used 12 personnel on 2.2% of their snaps. The other 97.8% was all 11 personnel, which features one tight end and three wide receivers. We are likely to see this personnel frequently used in a 3x1 formation, with three pass-catchers arranged in a bunch on one side (possibly before or after a shift) and a fourth isolated on the other side.

* More decisions made in the huddle. Coen said he intends to significantly increase the number of plays in which quarterback Baker Mayfield is given two or three play call options in the huddle, from which he will choose after seeing what the defense presents at the line of scrimmage. The hope is that this will allow the offense to get into more favorable matchups, particularly in the run game. And if the defense is loading the box and playing man on the outside, Mayfield can get to the "man-beater" plays Coen will have teed up. "Let's change the math and run away from numbers or gain the numbers back in our favor," said Coen. "if we get man coverage, well, let's get to a man-beater. Those are the things that it ultimately puts a lot more on the guys, but I think they are ready for it." In particular, Coen and the coaching staff believe that Mayfield can handle the extra responsibility and thrive in the system.

* More variety in the run game. At one point during the offseason, Coen was talking about how the Bucs' offense will present defenses with a lot of different types of runs to stop, rather than being primarily a wide zone/mid zone team or primarily a duo team. Coen wants their to be diversity in the ways that the linemen are hitting blocks, and at one point he rattled off the following list of run types: mid zone, wide zone, tight zone, duo, gap with pullers, perimeter runs. Coen believes opposing defenses are too good to continually best them with one scheme.

As noted above, Coen didn't call plays for the Rams and he wasn't with them last year, but he did help assemble the game plan during the week when he was the offensive coordinator and presumably has built a lot of his scheme based on what he learned in McVay's system. As far as we can trust the translation of much of the Rams approach to Coen's coaching this season in Tampa, we can expect some other shifts in how things are done. For instance (all numbers from NFL Next Gen Stats):

• More snaps with the quarterback under center, particularly in the run game. The Bucs used shotgun on 43.8% of their run plays last year, as compared to going under center 41.5% of the time and using pistol 14.7% of the time. The Rams' percentages were 19.7% in shotgun, 68.9% under center and 11.4% in pistol. The biggest difference, however, is in the run game. The Bucs' shotgun percentage on passing plays last year was 83.0%, compared to 74.3% for the Rams.
• Mayfield may be asked to throw over the middle more in 2024 than he did in 2023. The Buccaneers threw 40.6% of their passes outside the numbers last year, as compared to 31.9% for the Rams. Of course, the Bucs also have one of the best receivers in the league at winning on contested perimeter plays in Mike Evans, so this is an area where personnel could dictate Coen's decision-making in a way that oppose last year's numbers. The Rams threw 56.9% of their passes in the seams, while the Bucs were at 45.8%. The percentage of passes between the hashes was almost the same.
• Mayfield may be put on the run a bit more in 2024. The Rams threw 12.1% of their passes with the quarterback on the run last year, as compared to 8.8% for the Buccaneers. That's not a huge difference, but it's worth noting that Mayfield is probably a bit more mobile than Stafford at their respective points in their careers.
• The Bucs may run to the edges a little more under Coen. Last year, 36.8% of Tampa Bay's runs went outside the tackles. The Rams, meanwhile, ran outside on 46.0% of their rushing plays.
• Fewer unique personnel groupings. As noted above, Coen wants to present defenses with personnel packages and presnap looks that look very similar, only to have many different concepts to run and throw out of them. Last year, the Rams only used three different offensive groupings (type of personnel, not specific players) all season. For instance, they didn't run a single snap with six offensive linemen on the field, or with four receivers together or with two backs in the backfield. The Bucs didn't have a high percentage of usage in those categories, either, but they did throw out 10 unique personnel groupings.
• More intermediate throws. This is another category in which the Bucs' personnel may affect the numbers, but the Bucs threw the ball deep (20-plus air yards) 12.0% last year, as compared to 9.4% for the Rams. Tampa Bay also threw screens a bit more frequently than the Rams but the two teams' percentages of short throws (0-9 air yards) was identical at 46.8%. The difference was made up in intermediate throws (10-19) yards, which the Rams threw 22.5% of the time compared to 19.8% for the Bucs. (The figures don't add up to 100% because spikes and intentional throwaways are removed.)

Coen has had time to develop his own playbook, and it certainly won't look exactly like McVay's or that of other products of the Rams' system. Still, it's reasonable to expect that some of the above tendencies and emphases will carry over. Finding out what his quarterback does best will obviously impact how the offense is shaped, too; the Rams, for instance, went to more of a drop-back offense after trading Jared Goff for Matthew Stafford. The truth is, we're a long way from knowing exactly how the Bucs' offense will shape up in 2024. Training camp, however, will give us our first extended glimpes of what Coen and company are trying to construct.