Buccaneers' hiring Dirk Koetter gets mixed reviews

Tampa Bay Buccaneers appear extremely happy with Dirk Koetter as their new head coach, and justifiably so. He did a good job with the offense last year, and his early coaching hires are experienced and impressive. The rest of the NFL was less enthusiastic, though, especially compared to other teams' hires.

SB Nation's Yaron Weitzman gave the Bucs a B, which sounds good until you realize he gave four teams a higher grade.

If Koetter was indeed responsible for much of that, then deposing of Smith makes sense. But if it turns out that Koetter just happened to be the offensive coordinator on Winston's team, well, things could get ugly in Tampa real fast.

The fact that Koetter managed to coach David Garrard and Matt Ryan to career seasons suggest that he certainly had something to do with Winston's quality of play, but we are talking about the number one overall pick. Winston is not some scrub who had to be coached up, he was one of the best and most pro-ready quarterbacks to come out of college in recent memory.

Other outfits liked the hire better, though. Bleacher Report's Russell Baxter thought Koetter was the best hire in the bunch, while NFL.com's Gregg Rosenthal though the was the third-best hire in the group. Koetter would have ranked worse had it not been for his hire of Mike Smith as the defensive coordinator, Rosenthal notes.

Of course, other people's rankings really don't matter all that much. What matters is how well Koetter does. So far, so good.