Jason Licht Explains A Quality In A Good Coach
March 31st, 2025
Talkin’ coaches.
Bucs AC/DC-loving general manager Jason Licht is going on his 12th season as an NFL general manager. He’s now hired three head coaches (remember: lousy Lovie Smith brought in Licht, one of the very few — two? — good things Lovie’s ever done for the organization).
Along the way, Licht built a Super Bowl winner and that same team is on a fourpeat as NFC South champs.
So clearly Licht has had good and bad fortune in hiring coaches. In a sitdown with BSPN’s Mike Tannenbaum, a former GM himself, Tannenbaum asked Licht what goes into a good head coach.
Some coaches just are not built for the job, Licht replied. He noted when a guy jumps from coordinator to head coach, often he’s only used to working on one side of the ball with maybe having one or two issues to deal with each week. As a head coach, there are sometimes way more than a couple of daily issues.
“They just aren’t wired to do that,” Licht noted of some coaches who struggle managing team issues.
So Tannenbaum then asked Licht to name trait of a good coach. Licht noted it’s something both Bucco Bruce Arians and Todd Bowles have. No panic.
“I have a lot of those moments with both of Todd and Bruce,” Licht said. “I think one of the best qualities of a great head coach is, you walk in on Monday and you tell them, ‘Hey, both of our starting tackles are going to be out this week.’ And the ones that go, ‘UGH! What are we going to do? We are going to lose for sure!’ [generally are coaches who struggle.]
“Then you’ve got the ones like Todd and Bruce, are like, ‘All right. We’ll figure it out.’ That’s what we’re supposed to do. So that’s a great quality.”
The NFL is an unpredictable game. Injuries, suspensions, and the opponent change week-to-week.
The guys that can and will roll with the punches are the guys Licht wants in charge.
March 31st, 2025 at 5:31 am
Jason Licht … “Then you’ve got the ones like Todd and Bruce, are like, ‘All right. We’ll figure it out.’ That’s what we’re supposed to do. So that’s a great quality.”
I can’t imagine an NFL head coach replying ‘We’re gonna lose for sure’ to his GM. If I was the GM I’d launch him so fast his head would spin.
The old saying ‘You are where you are’ ALWAYS applies. If you’re down 2 starting tackles due to injury, sorry but that’s what you’ve got to deal with. Do the very best that you can (a good reason why DEPTH is so important?), prepare their backups well, and play the game. No rocket science involved.
JL’s statement about Todd & Bruce that ‘We’ll figure it out. That’s what we’re supposed to do.’ is more an EXPECTATION OF LEADERSHIP than being a ‘great quality’. Owners EXPECT their HCs (and GMs) to be able to ‘FIGURE IT OUT’. That’s why they get paid millions per year.
March 31st, 2025 at 5:39 am
The most important quility in a coach is winning. Right now Todd hovers around .500. Winning a crappy division with a first round exit isn’t good enough anymore. If that happens again, or worse find another coach period.
March 31st, 2025 at 6:00 am
Defense Rules, true enough but not all coaches have it no matter how much they get paid. No panic. Trait of a good leader. Hodad on the other hand, would be like”oh things didn’t go our way”. Then panic and fire the coach. Our GM and coach also know the value of patience. And understand nothing worthwhile comes easy. Most importantly they are as competitive as anyone in the building. Nobody is standing still. You’re getting better or worse and we’re getting better. Have to be blind not to see it.
March 31st, 2025 at 6:38 am
Kenton … Hodad’s exactly right in that the key quality is finding a way to win. Mike Tomlin’s been the Pittsburgh HC since 2007 because … he wins. His 18 years as their HC with ZERO losing seasons says a lot about Tomlin, but it also says a lot about the Steeler organization.
Since becoming HC in 2022, Todd Bowles is 27-24 (52.9% winning percentage). Since 2022, Mike Tomlin is 29-22 (56.8% winning percentage). Both organizations have been rebuilding (Rothlesberger retired after the 2021 season and Tom Brady should’ve retired after the 2021 season). Both teams are improving, but neither is ready to be considered Super Bowl favorites.
Bottom line to me is that both Todd Bowles and Mike Tomlin are solid coaches who can get their teams into the hunt, but who have each shown that more improvement is needed. These next 2 years will be critical to both of them IMO.
March 31st, 2025 at 6:59 am
I still remember the years when the loss of one key player pretty much
guaranteed a loss.
That is no longer the norm. In recent years that has changed, and the team and coaching staff have come away with wins almost nobody expected. We need to own our division because first place gets you allegedly much better non divisional
competition.
March 31st, 2025 at 7:12 am
I’ve openly criticized Coach Bowles on this here site more than once. I felt like he had two major issues that held this team back. 1) He coaches too conservative – “hey, it’s okay to go for it on fourth down in this instance coach.” 2) Time and game management.
He did recently address number 2 recently. I have high hopes he corrects number 1 this season.
March 31st, 2025 at 7:12 am
I think most fans underestimate the coaching transition. This offseason was agonizing with all the Bowles haters, and how they wanted to fire him for Coen, because he raised the performance of our offense?…smh. Just so easy to make that swap.
McVay ruined the NFL…each team hoping each young HC they hire is the next McVay. And yet we’ve seen this play out time and time again, and it’s really not working out. What fans don’t realize is this guy is a prodigy. Some guys are just born different. What he did at such a young age, was nothing short of remarkable…it’s not just about calling plays and managing both sides of the ball, it’s getting grown… and at times, spoiled entitled men to follow you, through good times and bad times. One of McVay’s greatest achievements is his recovery post Super Bowl, where his roster was purged of some pretty decent talent, and yet I think he’s only missed the playoffs once since their Super Bowl victory, and that’s after losing 2 first round draft picks and third to get Stafford.
Canales will be interesting guy to watch moving forward, I think we all saw the charisma he had, and he appears to have really good football knowledge given he witnessed for over a decade, Pete Caroll run the Seahawks organization. Carolina is not built very well right now, and he had them playing watchable football towards the end of last season. I can see Canales really never getting salty on offensive play calling, and handing it over to Idzik full-time, so he can focus on being head coach full-time. I think for most HCs that’s the best-case scenario.
March 31st, 2025 at 8:05 am
As far as I see it Todd’s in charge of his own destiny… String together some playoff wins and this debate goes away… It’s really that simple
March 31st, 2025 at 8:58 am
Hodad.
The NFL is very hard.
We are trending up.
We have been in salary cap hell for 3 years straight.
We have all 22 starters BEFORE the draft.
That’s insane.
We are building a dynasty.
Our locker room culture and our roster is the envy of 90% of the NFL.
We need to draft very well this year. And never “draft for special teams” like we did the year after winning the Super Bowl.
We need to draft to build the nastiest and deepest D-line in the NFL.
March 31st, 2025 at 9:05 am
Most who comment here are so unrealistic. Two years ago this team was expected to win 4-5 games by many. Last year since 2023 was a fluke, 2024 surely would be a down year. This year the same crowd is talking about a potential SB appearance. Through it all TB has been a constant. Hope he gets the players he needs this year to make the defense work. So far the results are encouraging. Still need a solid LB, DB and more help on EDGE. But if Emmanwori is available, hope LIcht takes him. No reason Emmanwori can’t be a LB. Jack Lambert weighed 205 his rookie year with Pitts.
March 31st, 2025 at 11:31 am
Gipper you don’t fail in getting your two cents in for Emmanwori. Makes me think we should make a play for him. In practice line him up across from Cody Mauch and see if Cody can knock his front teeth out. If it gets him playing like Jack Lambert then I’m all in!
March 31st, 2025 at 12:55 pm
*Asterisk – Jason agreed to fire Lovie and promote Dirk because it looked like Dirk was developing Jameis. That one seemed like an internal agreement. When Dirk was fired, Jason hired BA, and then when BA retired, Jason inherited Todd in another internal agreement.
In reality, Jason has hired only one head coach for the Bucs.
Dirk, at least, had the offense playing well as that was his specialty. It is puzzling and alarming that Todd has overseen such a precipitous decline in defensive performance (his specialty) since he’s been splitting his time between HC and DC, a mistake in today’s NFL.
Maybe 2025 will see a surge in defensive performance and 12 wins or more.
March 31st, 2025 at 1:26 pm
Kenton S,
Thanks…….When you see a once in a generation player, forget about need. Emmanwori will be a better player than Troy Polameu. That is saying a lot. Bucs need this guy. I, like you, have suffered through this secondary too long. Normally, would be pounding the table for another EDGE but the good ones will be gone by 19. Bucs don’t need a defensive “project.” We have had too many of those.
April 1st, 2025 at 4:53 pm
Todd’s cool head under pressure, immense pressure, is his best attribute. He’s a bright guy and a great coach. I for one am glad we have such a steady presence to coach up these young men.