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Add this to the craziest and newest NFL offseason in modern league history: Bruce Arians, who coached the Buccaneers to a Super Bowl LV win less than 14 months ago, is stepping down effective immediately to take on a front-office role to take over the team.
Tampa Bay will tap Arians’ preferred successor, defense coordinator Todd Bowles, as the new head coach. Bowles, 58, previously coached the Jets to a 24-40 record in 2015-18, his only full-time head coaching job. Bowles, who is black, would become the sixth minority head coach in the league, joining Mike Tomlin (Pittsburgh), Ron Rivera (Washington), Robert Saleh (Jets), Mike McDaniel (Miami) and Lovie Smith (Houston).
Arians, 69, said his new job is senior consultant for football and that gig will begin with 2022 draft prep in Tampa Bay.
The move comes as a surprise, but perhaps not shocking. Arians, the most colorful coach in a buttoned-up pro game, said he started considering stepping aside at the NFL Scouting Combine a month ago. He is a prostate cancer survivor and was hospitalized with an illness late in his first tenure as head coach at Indianapolis in 2012. Today he suffers from a torn Achilles tendon. But when he explained his reasons, health wasn’t the big thing.
He said he’s quitting the Tampa job because “following has always been huge for me. With the organization in probably the best shape in its history, with Tom Brady coming back… I’d rather see Todd in a position to succeed and not have to take a few [crappy] Work. I’ll probably retire in February next year anyway. So now I control the narrative. I’m not checking next February because [if] Brady gets hurt, we go 10-7 and it’s an open interview for the job… I’ve got 31 [coaches and their] Families who depend on me. It is very important to my wife not to let all these families down.”
Arians explained his reasoning in a phone interview with NBC Sports and the Los Angeles Times.
He was due to update his coaching staff in a Zoom call at 8pm on Wednesday, and he planned to send a message to his players explaining his decision, at the same time as communicating to his coaches.
New Bucs coach Todd Bowles. (Getty Images)
In a way, Arians said, Brady coming out of retirement encouraged him to keep going. In a 25-minute conversation, Arians explained the reasons for this February 2021 decision.
“It hit me after the Super Bowl,” he said. “I’ve been thinking really hard about going to the top. Then it was like, no, let’s go together. [The 2021 season] was a grind with all the injuries but still winning and getting to where we are. Immediately after, two to three weeks after that [I thought] …if I quit, my coaches will be fired. I couldn’t then.
“Tom was kind of the key. When Tom decided to come back… and all these guys are back now, it’s the perfect time for me to just go into the front office and still have the relationships I love.”
Arians said he wanted Bowles, the architect of the Bucs’ 2020 stifling defense that kept Kansas City to zero touchdowns in a 31-9 Super Bowl win, to succeed him whenever he decided to step down. Arians also wanted Bowles to have the advantage of a great quarterback on the list to give him the best chance of winning. The Bucs’ owners, the Glazer family, agreed. Hiring Bowles would be the fourth full-time minority coach hired by the Glazers (Tony Dungy, Raheem Morris, Lovie Smith, Bowles), which is the most in NFL history. No other team has had more than two non-interim minority head coaches.
Four times during a discussion about why now, Arians kept coming back to his coaching staff: “I know my boys are being taken care of. I couldn’t let her down.”
What complicated the final phase of this transfer from Arians to Bowles was the unusual timing of the move. Arian and the Bucs wanted Bowles to get the job, so they went to the league and basically said, let’s not do sham interviews knowing we’re hiring Bowles, who’s going to improve the league’s bottom line for minority hires.
It is common for teams to follow the Rooney Rule when looking for coaches, which dictates that at least two minority coaches be interviewed for each head coach opening. Since this situation occurred after the league year began in mid-March and the NFL does not allow coaching interviews until after the regular season, it would have set precedent for the league to allow coaching interviews now. Communications between the Bucs and the league on the matter are unknown, but the franchise feels comfortable enough after discussions with the league to confirm Bowles’ hiring.
The Bucs are scheduled to hold a press conference Thursday in Tampa where Arians and Bowles will discuss the transition.
The timing certainly brings with it an internet-driven round of speculation. Brady was rumored to have struggled with Arians and the allegedly lax way the team was sometimes managed during his first two years with the team, and this contributed to Brady’s 40-day retirement at the end of the 2021 season. Brady announced his return to the Bucs on March 13.
The logical question, with the odd timing of Arian’s retirement, will be: is there a connection between Brady’s return and Arian’s end of coaching?
“No,” Arians said. “No. Tom was very supportive of what I do. I mean I’ve had conflicts with every player I’ve coached because I cursed them all, including him. Great relationship off the field.”
Bucs quarterback Tom Brady and Arians. (Getty Images)
If there was conflict, perhaps friction is a good thing. In his last two seasons, aged 43 and 44, Brady had the most explosive offensive performances in a row of his 22-year career. In those two seasons, he threw 83 touchdown passes and 9,949 passing yards — his all-time highs for a two-year period. Brady looks set to have another productive season this year at 45.
Arians certainly wasn’t the control freak Brady had in coach Bill Belichick in his first 20 NFL seasons in New England. But the Arians/Brady combo resulted in a Super Bowl title and a 29-10 record in the quarterback’s first two years as a Patriot.
Arians has a 47-year coaching history dating back to 1975 when he was an assistant at Virginia Tech. He was Alabama’s running backs coach on Bear Bryant’s team for his last two seasons (1981-1982) as coach, and he speaks reverently of his days as a kid working for Bryant. “I always remembered Coach Bryant’s best advice: Train ’em hard, hug ’em later,” he said.
He was Peyton Manning’s first quarterback coach at Indianapolis in 1998, Ben Roethlisberger’s mentor at Pittsburgh until 2011, and was hired at Indianapolis in 2012 as Andrew Luck’s first pro offensive coordinator. It was there that Arians got his first chance as head coach at the age of 60. At the beginning of the 2012 season, Colts coach Chuck Pagano had to take a leave of absence due to leukemia treatment. Then the Arian star began to shine. He has twice won Coach of the Year – in 2012 with a 9-3 in that transitional role with the Colts and in 2014 with the budding Cardinals. His 95 coaching wins is a lot for a man who wasn’t a head coach until he was 60. He coached Arizona to the 2015 NFC title game 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 and gender blindness as it is about the victories and offensive plans he taught that made deep ball difficult. His final coaching staff in Tampa included 11 black coaches (including all three coordinators) in the league and two women.
Arians said he’s actually energetic as he considers staying on the job and entering the season with veteran backup Blaine Gabbert and Kyle Trask, last year’s unproven second-round pick. “Part of me,” he said, “was excited to coach Blaine Gabbert as quarterback and prove to everyone, ‘Kiss my ass. He is good.’ You know?”
He said his son and agent Jake Arians told him it wasn’t too smart to retire from a potential Super Bowl team. “I don’t really feel like I’m retiring,” Bruce said. “I’m not retiring. I’m just going to the other side of the building. I’ll be practicing. I am in the office. Whatever they ask of me.”
The move to Bowles will likely increase offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich and Brady’s influence on game plans and play-calling. Although Arians often credited Leftwich with doing everything to plan the game and execute the offense, the philosophy was Arian-based. Take risks, he preached. No risk, no cookie was a refrain from him.
Arians at Super Bowl LV in February 2021. (Getty Images)
A lot of coaches say they’re done. But they find reasons to come back. In recent years, Pete Carroll has shown no desire to leave coaching (he’s 70) and Bill Belichick, who looks like he’ll be coaching forever, turns 70 on April 16. Arians is in her age group but doesn’t sound like Carroll or Belichick.
“No,” said Arian, “that’s it. That’s it. I’ll be 70 in October. I’m just excited to help the Bucs because they’ve been so great to me and my family.”
There’s another benefit, Arians pointed out, to making that call now.
“I don’t have to worry about how many cocktails I drink on Saturday night,” he said.