The Bucs have finally made a hire at the offensive coordinator position, tabbing former Falcons offensive coordinator Zac Robinson for the job. This is a move that Pewter Report has been expecting all week and ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that Tampa Bay made the choice to hire Robinson early Thursday morning. The Bucs decided to cancel their second interview with former Titans head coach Brian Callahan, which was scheduled for Thursday and hire Robinson instead.

The Bucs will definitely be keeping run game coordinator/offensive line coach Kevin Carberry, who worked with Robinson in Los Angeles. This was one of the deciding factors for choosing Robinson, along with getting Baker Mayfield’s approval, as the two worked together in Los Angeles in 2022 for the last five weeks of the season.

Robinson interviewed with the Bucs over a week ago, as well as for the offensive coordinator posts with the Lions and the Eagles. Todd Bowles prefers to hire an experienced offensive coordinator and Robinson did that in Atlanta for the past two seasons with mixed results as the Falcons went 8-9 in back-to-back seasons.

Robinson had to deal with quarterback issues in each of his two seasons in Atlanta. The Falcons signed 36-year old quarterback Kirk Cousins to a massive contract in free agency despite coming off a torn Achilles in Minnesota the previous season. Cousins struggled in his Atlanta debut season and was benched for rookie Michael Penix Jr., the team’s first-round pick, past the midway point of the season.

The Falcons continued to start Penix in 2025 and he produced mixed results for the team, but was eventually lost for the season with a torn ACL. That prompted Atlanta to once again turn to Cousins, but the 37-year old quarterback couldn’t deliver and the team finished 8-9 once again, which prompted the firing of head coach Raheem Morris and presumably the Falcons offensive staff with the arrival of head coach Kevin Stefanski.

The Falcons had the league’s 13th-ranked (22.9 ppg) scoring offense in 2024, but the unit fell to 24th (20.8 ppg) this past season.

Former Falcons OC Zac Robinson – Photo by IMAGN Images – Brett Davis

Tampa Bay had the most recent offensive success under Liam Coen when he replaced Dave Canales as the team’s play-caller in 2024. The Bucs had a top 5 scoring offense and a top 5 running game under Coen, who also took Baker Mayfield’s game to new heights. Mayfield went to his second Pro Bowl appearance in 2024 after completing a franchise-record 71.4% completion percentage and throwing for 4,500 yards and 41 touchdowns – all career highs.

After Coen left for Jacksonville to become the Jaguars head coach, the Bucs promoted Grizzard, the team’s pass game coordinator as his replacement. But Grizzard only had one year’s worth of experience in the Rams-based offense that Coen brought from L.A. under Sean McVay.

The appeal of hiring Robinson could be that his approach and playbook is more similar to that of Coen’s. Like Coen, Robinson has roots in McVay’s Los Angeles Rams offense. Robinson spent five seasons with McVay, elevating from the Rams assistant quarterbacks coach to passing game coordinator/QB coach before calling plays for the first time in Atlanta in 2024.

Robinson was the Rams quarterbacks coach when Mayfield was in L.A. for the end of the 2022 season. Those connections were enough to land an interview, and ultimately the offensive coordinator position.

How The Bucs Got Here: Four Offseasons, Four Coordinator Searches

News of Zac Robinson’s hiring brings an end to yet another offensive coordinator search for Todd Bowles and the Bucs. Robinson becomes Bowles’ fifth offensive coordinator in his five years as head coach in Tampa Bay.

When Bruce Arians retired late in the 2022 coaching cycle and Bowles was promoted to head coach, he inherited Byron Leftwich. That year, even with Tom Brady under center, Tampa Bay finished 25th in scoring with 18.4 points per game. After a Wild Card loss at home to the Cowboys, Leftwich was fired.

In came Dave Canales ahead of the 2023 season, which was the Bucs’ first without Brady. Baker Mayfield signed a one-year prove-it deal in the offseason and Canales worked well with the former No. 1 overall pick of the Browns. The offense’s scoring only ticked up a little bit, jumping to 20.5 points per game, which was good for 20th in the NFL.

But a late-season run that saw the offense score 29, 34 and 30 points over three must-win games in December and then a 32-point performance in a Wild Card win over the Eagles made for a much different feeling than there was a year earlier with Leftwich calling the plays.

Bucs OC Dave Canales and QB Baker Mayfield – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

That season ended up being enough for Canales to garner attention for a head coaching position, as he would soon leave to become the head coach of the division rival Panthers.

Liam Coen would then replace Canales in 2024, taking the Bucs offense to new heights. Tampa Bay scored 29.5 points per game, which was the fourth-best mark in the NFL, and Mayfield had a career year with 4,500 yards and 41 touchdowns. The Glazers were prepared to make Coen the highest-paid coordinator in the league after that season, but he instead took the Jaguars’ head coaching job. That meant the Bucs would spend a third straight January searching for a new offensive coordinator.

Tampa Bay decided to promote Josh Grizzard to replace Coen, setting Mayfield and the offense up for some continuity after Grizzard spent 2024 as the team’s pass game coordinator and was responsible for the league’s best third-down offense. But the unit fell to 22.4 points per game during the 2025 season, tying for 17th in the league.

And when the Bucs decided to retain Bowles despite a 6-2 start devolving into an 8-9, playoff-less finish, Grizzard was fired. He had his faults in his first year as a play-caller, but he was more scapegoat than true failure considering he put together similar numbers to what Canales had done two years earlier.

So, with Grizzard fired, that set up a fourth offensive coordinator search in four offseasons and a fifth coordinator for Bowles in five seasons. That brings us up to date with the latest news.

Zac Robinson Becomes Bucs’ Fifth OC In Five Years

The Bucs have ultimately settled on Zac Robinson after two interviews over the last couple of weeks, including the final interview on Wednesday.

The offensive coordinator search began on Jan. 9 when the team interviewed former Titans head coach Brian Callahan and would go on to include meetings with Lions pass game coordinator David Shaw, Cardinals quarterbacks coach Israel Woolfork, former Falcons offensive coordinator Zac Robinson, former Giants offensive coordinator and interim head coach Mike Kafka, former Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken and former Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel.

Former Falcons OC Zac Robinson – Photo by IMAGN Images – Brett Davis

Tampa Bay’s offensive coordinator search in 2023 covered 10 candidates before Canales was hired, while the search in 2024 featured nine interviews before the team landed on Coen. There were also a few more candidates that year who decided to take other jobs before completing their scheduled interviews with the Bucs.

In 2025, the Bucs’ search was much less exhaustive, as they met with five external candidates before promoting Grizzard, who served as Coen’s pass game coordinator in 2024. Tampa Bay had hoped to hire either Monken or McDaniel, but Monken interviewed for the Browns head coaching job and was going to fall back on reuniting with John Harbaugh with the Giants if that didn’t come to fruition. McDaniel opted to be Jim Harbaugh’s offensive coordinator with the Chargers rather than take the Bucs job.

With all of that context, this year’s search was somewhere between the 2025 search and the ones Tampa Bay conducted in 2023 and 2024. Now, Robinson will be tasked with getting Mayfield back to a Pro Bowl level, reviving the Buccaneers run game and helping the team get back to the top of the NFC South.