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Since the end of the season, one question that has been on people’s minds is whether Dirk Koetter will continue to call plays for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers offense. Turns out that: yes, yes he will.
Bucs offensive coordinator Todd Monken spoke to the media today, and said that Koetter would continue to call plays this year. That per Scott Reynolds of Pewter Report, and every other reporter talking to him.
Monken reiterated that Koetter will continue to be the one who calls plays on offense this season.
— Scott Reynolds (@PewterReport) May 18, 2017
That solves that mystery, which kept on being a thing well into this offseason. I’m not sure why it did—it never seemed likely Koetter would stop making the calls—nor do I really get why it matters much.
Most of the work on playcalling is done during the week leading up to the game, and during the offseason. That’s when plays are installed, when the general gameplan is put together, when the decisions on which plays to call in which situations are made—and all of that is done by coaching staffs collectively, not just by the person who will calling the plays during the game.
The one issue where it does matter is when other game management decisions (timeouts and challenges, mostly) have to be made while also choosing a play. That’s a thing coaches can adjust to, though, and many, many head coaches do that successfully while still calling plays. Koetter didn’t make the best game management decisions last year, but that’s something he can work on during the offseason, too.
Anyway, Koetter will be making those decisions during the game still, and I guess that’s news.