Apologies for the overgeneralization, but in the NFL, coaches basically fall into two categories: the Brian Floreses and the Bruce Arianses.
Brian Flores won’t tell reporters that a player is out for the season even though said player already had season-ending foot surgery (as was the case in 2020 with Preston Williams).
Bruce Arians, meanwhile, six days before the biggest game of his life, is fine revealing that the only way an injured key defender (Lavonte David, a linebacker for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) won’t play in the Super Bowl is if someone shoots him.
Which approach is better? That’s not for us to say.
The Brian Floreses have won a bunch of championships (Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick are members of this esteemed fraternity).
But the Bruce Arianses of the world are certainly a lot more entertaining to have around in the week leading up to the big game.
Arians, at 68, is the ultimate YOLO coach.
His signature catchphrase? “No risk-it no biscuit.”
(You might be more familiar with the Latin phrase audentes fortuna juvat— or “fortune favors the bold” — but the sentiment is the same.)
Arians, who has spent nearly a quarter-century in the league, is finally at the pinnacle of his profession.
And he’s there because his Buccaneers, with three road wins in the 2020 playoffs to reach their first Super Bowl in a generation, have followed his lead.
Rob Gronkowski. Ndamukong Suh. Antonio Brown. Tom Brady.
There are some strong personalities in that locker room. But they coexist because Arians lets them be them.
Plus, it’s hard to envision any saying much that Arians won’t.
Monday, in his first availability of Super Bowl week ahead of Sunday’s title game against the Kansas City Chiefs, Arians held court for 45 fun minutes.
He reminisced about growing up in a working-class family in York, Pa., where his late father worked seven days a week to make ends meet.
He spoke about his early days in coaching, working for legend Bear Bryant at Alabama.
He recalled with great fondness his first head coaching job at Temple University.
“I thought I knew everything,” Arians said. “I didn’t know s---.”
But all that was merely a prelude for his long, decorated run as an NFL assistant, a Forrest Gump-like journey which paired him with some of the greatest players in NFL history.
He started out in the league as running backs coach for Marty Schottenheimer and the Chiefs, and in Year 1, helped Christian Okoye lead the league in rushing.
He’s the only person on the planet to coach Brady and Peyton Manning.
“Only take jobs with good quarterbacks,” Arians quipped Monday. “I’ve been very, very lucky.”
And very, very successful. He’s a two-time NFL Coach of the Year.
And he’s a two-time Super Bowl champion, each with the Steelers.
But despite all that, Arians only got his first shot as a head coach because his boss at the time, Chuck Pagano, got cancer in 2012 and had to take a leave of absence from the Colts.
In other words, he knows what it’s like to be passed over and overlooked. Which is why Arians has made his coaching staff look like America, not like a country club dressing room.
All three of his coordinators and his assistant head coach are Black. He has two women on his staff.
When asked why Monday, he replied: “They’re the best coaches I know. ... The women, that is a door that needed to be knocked down.”
And that’s not lip service. He believes his offensive coordinator, Byron Leftwich, was slighted in the NFL’s latest hiring cycle.
“I was very, very (ticked) that Byron didn’t even get an interview [to be a head coach],” Arians said.
With a win Sunday, Leftwich surely will get more attention next time around.
And perhaps he will someday even succeed Arians, who would be the oldest coach in NFL history to win the Super Bowl, in Tampa Bay.
But that day probably won’t be in 2021.
Asked this week by a Tampa radio station if he would consider retirement if the Buccaneers win Sunday, Arians gave a typical response:
“Hell no. I’m going for two.”
