It’s hardly a shocker that Tom Brady won the Super Bowl MVP on Sunday night. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers offense put up 31 points, and Brady was largely mistake-free (minus a near Tyrann Mathieu pick) as his team rolled to victory. But if there was a Most Valuable Person award that honored the most crucial contributor to the Bucs’ win, it would go to a different TB: defensive coordinator Todd Bowles.
The Buccaneers defense entered Raymond James Stadium on a mission. The chips on their shoulders were more like mountains. They were sick of hearing about the Chiefs’ weapons and prolific offense. The wounds of allowing Tyreek Hill to collect 203 yards in the first-quarter of their Week 12 matchup were still fresh.
What this defensive unit put together was a start-to-finish performance that ranks among the very best in any Super Bowl. They torched the Chiefs’ offensive line and pressured Mahomes all game from every direction. They held Hill in check; and they didn’t let a high-octane offense that garnered non-stop praise from every corner of the NFL this season score a touchdown. Not one single one.
Lavonte David, Shaquil Barrett, Jason Pierre-Paul, Devin White and so many others made the tackles, forced errant throws, and snagged key interceptions. But Bowles, with a shrewd combination of dialing effective plays and letting his defensive front freestyle, was the maestro.
As Barrett said after the game, “No matter what play was called, they were all great plays. We made anything and everything work”.
If Bowles was the coaching MVP, offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich was a close second. His game plan was fierce and unrelenting in exposing the Chiefs’ defensive weaknesses. It was the culmination of an extraordinary coaching year in which he coalesced with the most accomplished quarterback in NFL history.
Aside from coaching prowess and being Super Bowl champions, Bowles and Leftwich, along with revered special teams coordinator Keith Armstrong, share another commonality: they are Black. In fact, the Bucs feature the only all-Black slate of coordinators in the NFL. In 2021. Crazy, I know.
In a utopian world in which the NFL was built solely on meritocracy, the Bucs’ trio would not be an anomaly – after all, this is a league in which nearly 70% of players are Black. Bucs head coach Bruce Arians would be lauded for creating the best staff, not the most diverse. Leftwich wouldn’t have to awkwardly laugh off a reporter asking him a question intended for Bowles because apparently all black coordinators are interchangeable.
If there’s one takeaway from Super Bowl LV that shouldn’t need to be said at all but apparently needs to be shouted from a mountaintop, it is this: Black people can coach.
Bowles and Leftwich shattered any lingering notion that successful coaches, the ones who inspire the players and win Super Bowl rings, look a certain way.
Of course, Arians himself is an older white man. At 68, he’s the oldest head coach to win a Super Bowl. Arians is a savvy leader as well but his progressiveness and intentionality in hiring a diverse staff may be his crowning achievement. His staff also includes two full-time women coaches, assistant defensive line coach Lori Locust and assistant strength and conditioning coach Maral Javadifar.
Thank you Bruce Arians for showing the world that all 3 of your coordinators can be black, your assistant head coach can be black, you can have 2 full time women coaches and be the best team in the world. BA you’re a trail blazer. Leadership doesn’t have a look!
— Ryan Clark (@Realrclark25) February 8, 2021
These coaches either representative the locker room, or represent society at large. Arians cited his own path as the inspiration behind his hiring policy. His first shot at head coaching didn’t come until Arians was 60 – and only as a replacement for Chuck Pagano, who had been diagnosed with leukemia.
“The lack of opportunities has made me want to give more opportunities to more people. The minorities on our staff are great, great coaches … The women, that was a door that needed to be knocked down and I’m so happy the two we have are so overly qualified and doing such a great job,” Arians said.
But when it comes to elevating successful minority coordinators to the head coaching ranks, teams have failed for far too long. This last coaching cycle was particularly woeful.
Neither Bowles or Leftwich, nor Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy for that matter, got a head coaching job but New Orleans Saints tight ends coach Dan Campbell, who is white, got the Lions gig. Leftwich didn’t get a single interview for a head coach opening but Josh McCown, whose coaching experience mainly involves helping out at his sons’ high school, did.
“I was very, very pissed that Byron didn’t at least get an interview this year,” Arians said. “For the job that he’s done … I think I get way too much credit and so does Tom Brady for the job that Byron has done.”
Leftwich is among the many qualified minority coaches shunned by an NFL ownership group that is almost exclusively made up of older white men. Somehow all these years after the NFL instituted the Rooney Rule there are only three Black head coaches. It’s shameful. And the NFL’s shame has been noted by the most powerful person in the United States.
“When I picked a Black woman to be vice president, I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands of little girls just said, ‘I can do that. Wow. Wow.’ It matters, it matters,” Joe Biden told Westwood One on Super Bowl Sunday. “And I don’t understand why they cannot find, because they exist, so many African American coaches that are qualified, that should be in the pros in my view.”
Perhaps if the NFL ever altered their ridiculous hiring cycle and made all teams wait until after the Super Bowl, clubs would be battling to scoop up Bowles and Leftwich this week. But we said the same thing about Bieniemy coming off last year’s Super Bowl win and he was once again shut out this cycle.
To truly have diversity in the NFL, teams have to model themselves after Arians and the Bucs. They have to diversify in broad strikes.
They have to have that intentionality and put qualified minorities in leadership positions like coordinators and head coaches. They have to chuck out any implicit bias. They have to believe that a diverse staff will strengthen their culture. And by doing so, they may just end up as Super Bowl champions. Just ask the Bucs.
