Things aren’t going as smoothly as expected in Tampa.
Tom Brady and the Buccaneers carry a 7-4 record, which isn’t terrible, but they lost two of the last three games and the team has looked visibly frustrated. The Kansas City Chiefs are next on the list and it could drag the Buccaneers down to a 7-5 record — leaving them behind the 8-2 New Orleans Saints.
Rumors have floated around that frustration is building between Tom Brady and Bruce Arians, and ESPN’s Dan Graziano backed that speculation on Friday’s ‘Get Up’.
“There’s a lot of theories, obviously it was supposed to work better than this, but one of them is that there is real tension,” Graziano said, transcribed by WEEI. “Bruce Arians and Tom Brady just met, right, it’s almost like Arians was watching some sort of movie star action-hero, and then met him in person and said, ‘I thought you’d be bigger.’”
“So if you’re Arians, you’re looking, going saying, ‘This is what you wanted, we got you everything you asked for, why aren’t you delivering, why doesn’t it look like it looks in practice.’ And I think you’re seeing some frustration bubbled to the surface.”
The 43-year-old’s deep ball has been completely off the over the past three games and his age is entirely apparent at times. The divisional rival Saints won both matchups against Tampa Bay in convincing fashion and that’s not a good scenario for a playoff run.
Things weren’t easy for Brady and Bill Belichick in New England, but they still worked. This is a player-coach relationship that may not be salvageable.
