The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are taking their time about hiring their next head coach, which means the candidates who are currently employed by other teams have put their offseasons in something of a holding pattern.
One candidate is Panthers offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski, and that means the Panthers don’t know whether they’re going to have to be in the market for a new offensive coordinator in the weeks ahead. Panthers head coach Ron Rivera wishes he could find out already.
“Believe me, I’d love to know just so we can go forward,” Rivera told the Tampa Bay Times. “We’ve got a lot of things we have to do and we’ve kind of put [them] off during this whole period.”
There’s no reason for the Bucs to speed up the process just to placate the Panthers, but this situation does demonstrate how a team with a head-coaching vacancy can mess with the offseasons of other teams simply by stringing their assistants along. The Buccaneers have indicated that they won’t rush to hire a head coach, so Rivera and Chudzinski may not hear anything any time soon.