Getty Images Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady
Coaching a future Hall-of-Famer can be a challenge in any sport. Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians is facing that challenge with quarterback Tom Brady joining the team.
How’s it working out so far? Arians treats Brady like “just another guy,” as ESPN’s Jenna Laine details.
“He gets cussed out like everybody else,” said Arians, who has coached other premier quarterbacks such as Andrew Luck, Carson Palmer, and Ben Roethlisberger (as an offensive coordinator).
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Concern Over Brady Picking Up Bucs’ Offense?
Arians isn’t concerned about Brady getting acclimated with the Bucs’ offense, calling the QB “the least of (his) worries.”
“He’s where he needs to be. We need to get more live reps. Blocking, tackling — this game’s a blocking and tackling game. Fourteen days to block and tackle. Is that enough? And I hate tackling ourselves,” Arians said. “We don’t want to road-block ourselves, but we’ve gotta get ready to play a game. I think that’s the biggest disadvantage — not being in pads and not playing fast.”
Tampa Bay had its first offensive vs. defense practice on Friday and they’ll have another one on Monday.
“Just playing fast,” Arians said. “He knows what he’s doing. But now the speed is going to pick up for the first time for him. Seeing how he processes the information that he thinks he knows and we’ll find out what he does know and doesn’t know at a much higher pace, and we haven’t gone against our defense and we’re very complicated defensively, so it’ll be a lot of fun for him.”
Brady recently spoke of getting on the “same page” with his new teammates.
“Everyone sees football a little bit different,” Brady said while adding that the coronavirus pandemic added complexity to coming together.
“The only thing you can do is adjust to the situation and adapt the best way you can,” Brady said. “Put as much time and energy now as we can into it. I think the reality is that the clock is ticking on everybody. We’re gonna have to work as hard as we can and not waste any minutes of any day trying to get used to each other — embrace the challenge and see what we can become.”
Buccaneers All-In This Season (Minus One Player)
Concerns over the safety of playing amid the COVID-19 pandemic still exist and NFL players have the right to opt-out of the 2020 season. Sixty-nine players have chosen to opt-out, as Pro Football Action captures in its COVID-19 Opt-Out Tracker.
Tackle Brad Seaton is the only member of the Buccaneers on that list. Seaton, who spent 2017 and 2019 on the franchise’s practice squad, was no lock to make the roster, though he could have provided the team with depth on the offensive line.
The NFC South hasn’t had too many players opt-out. The Panthers and Saints each have two players (none of which are starters) opting out and the Falcons currently have no players choosing to sit out the season.
Tight end Cameron Brate, who was one of the participants in Brady’s drills earlier this offseason, announced that he tested positive for COVID-19. Brate has recovered and the 29-year-old made a video promoting the donation of plasma from people who have recovered from COVID-19.