The Bruce Arians legacy – and why he deserves lots of praise

One of the greatest coaches in NFL history, Bruce Arians officially retired on Wednesday, passing the Tampa Bay Buccaneers‘ torch to Todd Bowles, his former defensive coordinator.

Arians, who’s almost 70, will take on a senior football adviser role in the Buccaneers’ front office as he helps the transition for a new head coach. He decided to retire as soon as Brady came back, saying that he wanted to give Bowles a better path to success.

Even with a single Super Bowl ring, the game will miss Arians, one of the best quarterback gurus ever.

The quarterback whisperer

One of the most famous football books out there is called “The Quarterback Whisperer” and it was written and published by Arians in 2017 – personally, I’ve read it and I can’t recommend it highly enough. The coach details how he developed some of the best quarterbacks in the league’s history while reflecting on his career.

Arians, for example, was the quarterback’s coach for the Indianapolis Colts from 1998 to 2000, the first years of Peyton Manning’s career in the league. After his rookie year, Manning was nominated for an All-Pro and Pro Bowl with Arians coaching him, which later earned him the position of offensive coordinator for the Cleveland Browns in the franchise’s final playoff appearance until 2020.

He later spent eight years on the Pittsburgh Steelers coaching staff, playing a pivotal role in Ben Roethlisberger’s evolution into an elite quarterback. Fired in 2011, he was the Colts’ interim head coach in 2012 following the discovery of Chuck Pagano’s leukemia, working directly with Andrew Luck in his rookie year; yet, he took over as head coach for the Arizona Cardinals in 2013, just around the time that Carson Palmer revived his career and the team had some NFC Championship Game appearances.

All quarterbacks who have had a relationship with the coach always show the same respect for his way of commanding. As we know, Arians is a coach who likes risk a lot, even though it can sometimes seem unnecessary, for example in long passes in short third downs. His offenses have always involved vertical throws, even though, according to him, his playbook was quite simple. If players of the caliber of Luck, Palmer, Manning, Roethlisberger and Brady recognize someone’s influence on their development, surely that someone is quality.

Brady, the key piece for a ring

Arians only (officially) assumed a head coaching role in the NFL in 2013, at the age of 61, a risky gamble by the Arizona Cardinals at the time. Within the premise of taking risks that’s characteristic of the coach, he began his stay in the organization by trading for quarterback Carson Palmer, already a veteran and who did not come from great years, and choosing in the Draft defensive back Tyrann Mathieu who, despite being quite talented, came from several problems off the field at LSU and saw his quote drop for that reason. The two became major players in the Cardinals in the following years.

In the 5 years when he was in charge of the organization, Arians had his peak in 2015, taking the team to the NFC Championship Game and with Palmer having the best season of his career, even earning an All-Pro berth. After two years without a playoff in 2016 and 2017, he announced his retirement from the league, changing his mind in 2019 to take over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The 7-9 record was largely unsatisfactory and resulted in the departure of Jameis Winston from the quarterback post, with Arians declaring that “if they could win games with Winston, they could win games with any quarterback”.

Well, ‘any quarterback’ ended up being the greatest of them all when Brady signed with the Buccaneers in March 2020. He wasn’t the only reason for the 2021 title, but his arrival raised the bar for Tampa Bay a lot. It seemed complicated to understand how Arians’ vertical system would adapt to Brady’s arm, which had been showing less and less strength in his final years in New England.

The two managed to resolve this issue over the course of the year and the team caught fire on its way to the Super Bowl, cementing the legacy of a true quarterback master. Even though they couldn’t manage to repeat in 2021, no Tampa Bay fan will ever be disappointed for the past two years.

Title or no, Hall of Fame or no, Arians deserves to be remembered as one of the greats. And after retiring officially on Wednesday, he will.