Former Buccaneers head coach Mike Smith says that he will no longer pursue coaching opportunities (Twitter link via SiriusXM’s Alex Marvez). The 59-year-old says it’s time “to do something different” in his life after 36 years in the profession. 
Smith’s last stop came with the Bucs, but that ended when they made a change at DC just weeks into the season. At the time, Tampa Bay had one of the league’s worst defenses with 34.6 points allowed per contest and 82 points allowed over its past two games under Smith. The Bucs’ matador D was on pace to allow the most points in NFL history, so Smith’s October dismissal did not come out of the blue.
Smith began his career as a graduate assistant at San Diego State in 1982. In 1999, he crossed over to the professional ranks as an assistant with the Ravens. His first big break came as the Jaguars’ defensive coordinator in 2003, and he parlayed that into a long run as the Falcons’ head coach beginning in 2008.
We here at PFR wish Smith the best in retirement.
His performance with the Bucs DC shows that he wasn’t 100% into it. I won’t be shocked if he gets the itch in a few yrs to coach again.
The first sentence….I thought he had been the Falcons HC?
He was falcons HC
Mike lost the eye of the tiger his last year with the Falcons. He went from trying to beat up opposing players during the game to an uninterested Grandpa in a span of 2 years.
Good on him that he knows when to call it quits. Time waits for no man.
Not a very good coach, canton need not be notified
We gonna pretend he doesn’t look like Steve Martin?
I have to disagree on Smitty not be a good coach. A Life Time record of 66-46. Even more impressive, his first 5 years 56-24. The big problem, a playoff record of 1-4. The team got very LAX in it’s performance the final 2 years, but he was not helped at all with poor drafts by Thomas Dimitroff. I can’t explain what occured in Tampa, but a bad coach doesn’t post the record he did those first 5 seasons.
Dirk Koetter would still be a Head coach if he would have let Smith go after the first year. Jobs and buddies do not go well.
He made the falcons better. He truly did. Most people forget this, but they weren’t good at all when he came in. Now he wasn’t elite by any nature and had a ceiling. But he made us a solid team again.