Cowher would bring Buccaneers' buzz back, but at what price?

There's no question it's tempting to imagine what the Tampa Bay Buccaneers would look like next season with "The Jaw" prowling the sidelines, barking orders and imposing his considerable force of will. Forget for a moment whether the Bucs actually could land Bill Cowher -- or if the Glazers even want to -- and just focus on that vision.

With all respect to Raheem Morris, Cowher would give the organization and the city a triple-sized shot of adrenaline. The buzz would be back.

So just do it, right?

I know the Bucs are playing better and responding well to Morris, but the NFL is filled with mediocre teams who mask bad seasons with a nice run in December, only to start off 1-6 the following year. If the Glazers decide Cowher is their guy, go get him no matter what happens this Sunday against Atlanta.

But there's an issue to me that is much more important than the estimated $8 million a year the Glazers would have to fork over for Cowher.

Cowher is expected to want total control of football operations wherever he lands -- something he did not have in Pittsburgh. He'll want to decide who is drafted, who stays, who goes -- all that stuff. Maybe you trust his football mind enough to do that.

Or maybe, like me, you think that's a caution light.

I keep thinking back to a night just a few weeks after the Bucs won the Super Bowl in 2003. They were the model organization then, led by the brilliant fireball coach Jon Gruden and General Manager Rich McKay, who put the pieces together.

But it all started coming apart at a hotel where NFL owners and officials were meeting. Gruden mouthed off to reporters about McKay, ripping his GM in public for this and that. Closer inspection exposed a rift between the two that came down to one of the oldest problems in the book -- a power struggle.

As a coach, Gruden lived in the moment. If he saw something he liked in a player, he pushed McKay to go get that guy immediately, no matter the cost to long-term growth.

McKay had a different approach. He believed in building an organization that could be, in his words, "in the hunt" every year for a title. Sometimes that meant letting players develop for two or three years before they became contributors. Gruden didn't have the patience for that.

That difference in approaches wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

Gruden, for all his mercurial ways, could be a brilliant coach. I mean, the man turned Brad Johnson into a Super Bowl-winning quarterback. He also knew enough to stay out of Monte Kiffin's defense.

But that separation of church and state, so to speak, fell apart when Gruden's tirade went public. Instead of pulling both men into a room and reminding them that together they had just won the Lombardi Trophy, the Glazers ultimately sided with Gruden. They gave him the control he demanded, including hand-chosen GM/puppet Bruce Allen. What followed was a mishmash that perfectly mirrored Gruden's frenetic style.

The Bucs changed quarterbacks as often as people do socks. They got old because it takes time to win with young players. Their drafts were inconsistent and often unproductive.

We saw the result.

I'm not saying that would happen if Cowher came here.

But if I'm the Glazers and trying to plot the future direction of my franchise, I have to think awfully hard about setting up another system with an unchecked strong man at the top.

I already hear the counter arguments, and they are good ones. Current General Manager Mark Dominik squandered a lot of money this year on the likes of Mike Nugent, Michael Clayton, Angelo Crowell, Luke McCown and so on. They went through two coordinators and three quarterbacks. They lost a lot of games.

They lost a lot of goodwill in the community.

I also wonder, though, if a single all-powerful coach/GM would have had the patience to draft Josh Freeman with the No. 1 pick, knowing how many other needs there were on this team. I doubt Gruden would have, but that doesn't mean Cowher would have the same approach if he comes here.

You build an organization through checks and balances. Sometimes a coach has to be told "no" even if it means a few short-term losses now. Would General Manager Cowher be willing to tell Coach Cowher that he'll just have to suck it up for the time being?

Maybe.

But if this thing ever gets to the point where the Glazers and Cowher sit down face-to-face, they better look past Cowher's jaw and focus more on how he plans to get this done. If they trust him, then fine. Go for it.

But that caution light continues to blink.