Bucs OC Liam Coen Explains Motion Strategy

Discover how Tampa Bay Buccaneers' new offensive coordinator Liam Coen is using motion to outsmart opponents this season.

Jul 25, 2024; Tampa, FL, USA; Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator Liam Coen during training camp at AdventHealth Training Center. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images / Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images

Football is a chess match, and for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this season, presnap motion is going to be one of the key pieces to uncovering the opponent’s plans and attacking them appropriately.

New offensive coordinator Liam Coen held the same position with the Los Angeles Rams in 2022 before joining the Buccaneers this offseason. In that season, his offense used motion 49 percent of the time according to Sports Info Solutions, ranking 11th in the NFL.

Conversely, in 2023 under coordinator Dave Canales, Tampa Bay ranked 25th in the league, though the percentage of plays featuring motion only dropped by six percent.

Still, clearly this Bucs offense is making presnap motion a priority and as much as you might expect to see it you might think some of it is purely for show. Coen would tell you you are wrong for making that assumption.

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How Liam Coen Uses Motion to Gain an Advantage

“It’s funny, the strength and conditioning staff had asked me in the offseason, ‘How much are these wideouts going to run?’ I said we’re not going to kill them in routes in air or on plays, but they’re going to run a lot – they’re going to run a lot more than they’ve ever run,” Coen said when asked about the usage of motion in his offense. “That’s pre-snap, post-snap, motion, shift. We don’t just do it to be cute, we don’t just do it to say we do it. It’s to undress coverage, it’s to undress pressures, it’s to get man[-to-man or] zone indicators, it’s to gather information.

"We say, ‘GTS’ – go to school on the defense and try to gain information for our guys to say, ‘Okay, we just did that motion, this is how they responded, I can maybe rule out a few coverages or defenses pre-snap, so now I have a better idea of how to go execute this play.’ That’s the whole point of it.”

On the other side of the ball there’s a potential for a near polar opposite approach. 

In his four seasons calling the offense as the head coach of the Arizona Cardinals, new Washington Commanders offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury never ranked higher than 27th when it came to using motion, and finished in the 30s three of his four years.

So when it comes to Week 1, there’s a strong possibility — likelihood even — that one side will be moving a lot before and after the snap, and the other will take a more straightforward approach to how they execute their offense.

And in the end, we'll see which approach works best against near equally aggressive defensive coordinators on both sides of the game.

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