Add this to the craziest, newest NFL offseason in modern league history: Bruce Arians, who coached the Buccaneers in a Super Bowl LV win less than 14 months ago, is retiring to take on a front office role with the team. enter into force immediately.
Tampa Bay will place Arians’ preferred successor, defensive coordinator Todd Bowles, as the new coach. Bowles, 58, previously coached the Jets 24-25 in 2015-18, his only job as a full-time head coach. Bowles, who is black, would become the sixth minority coach in the league, along with Mike Tomlin (Pittsburgh), Ron Rivera (Washington), Robert Saleh (Jets), Mike McDaniel (Miami) and Lloy (Miami) and .
The 69-year-old Arians said that his new job will be as a “senior football consultant” and that the concert will begin with the preparation of Tampa Bay’s draft in 2022.
The move is surprising but perhaps not shocking. Arians, the most colorful coach in a buttoned professional game, said he started thinking about leaving the NFL Scouting Combine a month ago. He is a survivor of prostate cancer and was hospitalized due to illness at the end of his first coaching term in Indianapolis in 2012. Today he suffers from a torn Achilles. But when he explained his reasons, health was not the big thing.
He said he was resigning from Tampa because “the success has always been huge for me. With the event in perhaps the best situation in its history, with Tom Brady returning … I would rather see Todd in a position to be successful and not have to take a few [crappy] work. I will probably retire next year, anyway, in February. So, I’m in control of the narrative right now. I do not check it next February because [if] Brady gets hurt, let’s go 10-7, and it’s an open job interview … I got 31 [coaches and their] families that depend on me. “My wife is great at not disappointing all these families.”
Arians explained his reasoning in a telephone interview with NBC Sports and the Los Angeles Times.
He was scheduled to brief his coaching staff on a Zoom call at 8 p.m. on Wednesday and planned to send a message to his players explaining his decision at the same time as telling his coaches.
The new coach of the Bucks, Todd Bowles. (Getty Images)
Somehow, Arians said, Brady, who retired, encouraged him to move on. In a 25-minute conversation, Arians explained the reasons for this decision, which dates back to February 2021.
“It hit me after the Super Bowl,” he said. “I thought very hard to get to the top. Then it was like, no, let’s go for two. [The 2021 season] It was a trophy with all the injuries, but we were still winning and getting where we got to. Immediately after, two to three weeks later [I thought] … if I resign, my coaches are fired. I could not do it then.
“Tom was kind of the key. When Tom decided to return … And all these guys back now, it’s the perfect time for me to go to the front office and continue to have the relationships I love. “
Arians said he wanted Bowles, the architect of the Bucks’s suffocating 2020 defense that kept Kansas City to zero in touchdowns in the 31-9 Super Bowl victory, to succeed him whenever he chose to resign. Arians also wanted Bowles to have the advantage of a great general on the roster to give him the best chance of winning. The owners of the Bucs, the Glazer family, agreed. The hiring of Bowles would be the fourth full-time minority coach to be hired by the Glazers (Tony Dangi, Rahim Morris, Lovy Smith, Bowles), who is the greatest in NFL history. No other team had more than three non-temporary minority coaches.
Four times during a discussion about why now, Arians kept coming back to his coaching staff: “I know my children will be taken care of. “I could not leave them hanging.”
What complicated the final stage of this transfer from the Arians to the Bowles was the unusual time of the move. The Arians and the Bucks wanted Bowles to get the job, so they went to the league and said, in essence, Let’s not go through fake interviews when we know we are hiring Bowles, who will improve the results of the minority league hiring.
It is common for teams to follow Rooney’s coaching rule, which stipulates that at least two minority coaches must be interviewed for each coach opening. Because this situation occurred after the start of the league year in mid-March, and the NFL only allows coaching interviews after the regular season, it would be a precedent for the league to allow coaching interviews now. Communication between the Bucs and the league on this subject is unknown, but the franchise feels comfortable enough after discussions with the league to confirm the recruitment of Bowles.
The Bucks are expected to give a press conference on Thursday in Tampa, with the Arians and Bowles discussing the transition.
The timeline highlights what will surely be a round of speculation being fueled by the Internet. It was rumored that Brady had problems with the Arians and the supposedly relaxed nature of the way he handled the team from time to time during his first two years with the team and this contributed to Brady’s 40-day departure at the end of the 2021 season. Brady announced his return to the Bucs on March 13th.
The logical question, with Arians’s strange time to resign, will be: Is there a connection between Brady’s return and Arians’s resignation from coaching?
“No,” Arians said. “No. Tom was very much in favor of what I do. I mean, I had conflicts with every player I coached because I insulted everyone, including him. Great relationship off the pitch.”
Bucks General Tom Brady and Arians. (Getty Images)
If there was a collision, maybe the friction is good. In his last two seasons, at the ages of 43 and 44, Brady had the most explosive offensive performance, back to back, of his 22-year career. In those two seasons, he threw 83 touchdowns and 9,949 passing yards – his all-time high for a period of two years. Brady seems ready to have another productive season at 45 this year.
Arians was certainly not the monster Brady had under coach Bill Belicick in the first 20 seasons of the NFL in New England. But the Arians / Brady combination led to a Super Bowl title and a 29-10 record in the first two years of the post-Patriot general.
Arians has 47 years of coaching history, dating back to his days as an assistant in 1975 at Virginia Tech. He coached Alabama at Bear Bryant’s staff during his last two seasons (1981-’82) as coach, and speaks reverently of his days as a kid working for Bryant. “I always remembered coach Bryant’s best advice: Train them hard, hug them later,” he said.
He was Peyton Manning’s first coach in 1998 at Indianapolis, Ben Roethlisberger’s mentor at Pittsburgh until 2011 and was hired to be Andrew Luck’s first professional attacking coach in 2012 at Indianapolis. There Arians got his first chance as a coach at the age of 60. At the beginning of the 2012 season, Colts coach Chuck Pagano had to take leave for leukemia treatment. It was then that the Martian star began to shine. He won the Coach of the Year twice – winning 9-3 in 2012 in this intermediate role with the Colts and then in 2014 with the rising Cardinals. His 95 coaching victories are many for a man who was not the first coach until he turned 60 years old. He led Arizona to the NFC title game in 2015 and then the Bucs to the 2020 Super Bowl title with Brady.
He would prefer his legacy to be at least as much about color blindness and gender as the victories and offensive formations he taught that were heavy on the deep ball. His last coaching staff in Tampa included 11 black coaches (including all three coordinators) and two women.
Arians said he was really full of energy thinking about staying at work and entering the season with veteran backup Blaine Gabbert and Kyle Trask, last year’s unproven second-round pick. “Part of me,” he said, “is excited to train Blaine Gabbert as a general and prove to everyone, ‘Kiss my ass.’ He is good.’ You know?”
He said his son and agent, Jake Arians, told him it was not very smart to move away from a possible Super Bowl team. “I do not really feel like moving away,” Bruce said. “I am not retiring. I just move to the other side of the building. I will be in training. I will be in the office. “Whatever they want me to do.”
Moving to the Bowles is likely to increase the influence of attacking coordinator Byron Leftwich and Brady on game plans and play-calls. Although the Arians often accuse Leftwich of doing everything in the game to plan and execute the attack, the philosophy was based on the Arians. Take opportunities, preach. No risk, no cookie was a refrain of him.
The Arians at Super Bowl LV in February 2021. (Getty Images)
Many coaches say it’s over. But they find reasons to return. In recent years, Pete Carroll has shown no desire to quit coaching (he is 70 years old) and Bill Belichick, who looks like he will coach forever, turns 70 on April 16. Arians are their age, but they do not sound like Carroll or Belichick.
“No,” said Arians, “that’s it. This is. “I will be 70 in October. I just can’t wait to help the Bucs because they were so great for me and my family.”
There is another benefit, Arians pointed out, to making that call now.
“I do not need to worry about how many cocktails I have on Saturday night,” he said.
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Following the publication of this story, the Arians issued an extensive statement, which read in part:
“I have spent most of the last 50 years of my life on the sidelines as a football coach in one form or another. Today, I made the decision to move from the sidelines to another role with the Buccaneers’ front office, assisting (general manager) Jason Licht and his staff. I love football. I love relationships, strategy, competition – everything. It was a hell of a ride, but I know this’s the right time for me to make that transition…
“I…
