Buccaneers interview Lions coach who is so insanely ready for bigger things
Don’t be shocked if this Detroit Lions coach gets a job with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers fired their entire coaching staff to a somewhat uncomfortable level, but they’ve wasted no time looking for new coaches.
One of the more intriguing interviews they completed this week was for their special teams coordinator job.
Buccaneers completed an interview with the Detroit Lions assistant special teams coordinator, Jett Modkins
As a Lions reporter, I can tell you that Modkins is one of the most ready assistant coaches I’ve covered in the last 11 seasons. It’s a surprise that he hasn’t been hired yet, but special teams coordinator is one of those jobs that doesn’t open up all that much.
Modkins has been with the Lions for five seasons, and he’s grown more and more each year. Modkins comes with the recommendation of Lions special teams coordinator Dave Fipp and head coach Dan Campbell, who both worked with Todd Bowles on the Miami Dolphins coaching staff. Here’s what Fipp thinks of Modkins:
“Yeah, Jett – I mean what we were looking for is a guy who obviously really hungry about coaching football. My assistant needs to have a lot of computer skills.\,” Fipp said. “They end up putting a lot of stuff into a computer. So, I mean, probably what he does most for me, to be honest, is just putting together PowerPoints. Like the format, there, but every week, you’ve got to put in all the new pictures, all the new drawings, where the other team’s kicking the ball on the kick charts, and just a lot of data information that we end up presenting to the players or using to build a plan. And so he does a ton of that stuff, so obviously being able to handle the computer stuff was a big part of it.
“We wanted somebody who was young and hungry to grow and learn and who was all in, committed. I think anytime you’re an assistant, I think the best thing you can do is really just put yourself in the coordinator’s shoes and say, ‘What does this guy need me to do?’ I think what happened to me is when I coached college football for 10 years, I was the defensive coordinator for eight of them. And then I left that, and I went to the NFL, and when I got in the NFL, I became an assistant again to the special teams coordinator. And it was the best thing that ever happened to me because I had been a coordinator, and it was like, ‘I know exactly what this guy wants. He doesn’t need a ton of help with ideas. He doesn’t need this.
“He just needs me to bust my ass with all these things, help him out with that, and get that done.’ So, that’s really kind of to me, what we’re looking for, what I’m looking for. And then you want high motor, energy, energetic, bright future ahead of them, good person, honest, direct. You want a guy who can handle the players and not acquiesce to those guys, but be able to tell them what they need to do and be able to project my word and message or our word and message. And he’s done a great job since he’s been here.”
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