The Senior Bowl Is Not A Deadline

The next big front office milestone for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is rapidly approaching.

The senior bowl is an important chance for front office personnel to get their first good look at the talent which will be available in the 2012 NFL draft. It is also a place teeming with NFL coaching talent, and a great place for a new head coach to round out their staff.

Tampa Bay is running short on time to have a coach in place for this off-season milestone. But is it critical to wrap up the search for a head coach by then?

General manager Mark Dominik has come up on a bit of a fork in the road: you can either spend the Senior bowl week observing young talent to use on his upcoming fifth pick in the NFL draft, or he can spend a week interviewing a long line of possible coordinators and assistant coaches with his new head coach.

It is no secret that Dominik believes that building through the draft is the correct way to get Tampa Bay to the Super Bowl. So I suspect this deadline is artificial to the Bucs coaching search. If all the potential candidates have been interviewed and the right decision can be made before the senior bowl, that makes sense. However, if there are candidates on the remaining 4 NFL teams still playing in the playoffs or if the list is simply too long to get through before the Senior bowl week, it may make sense for Dominik to just go ahead and proceed as normal for the next week or so. The coaching search can resume after the senior bowl.

 So while some may think that the deadline is important, the countdown timer on the Senior Bowl homepage is not nearly as important as continuing to add talant to a roster where 7th round draft picks have been able to reach the 53 man roster each of the last 3 years.