Getty Bruce Arians coached Tom Brady hard during the team's Super Bowl run.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Bruce Arians explained Monday why he doesn’t give any football player a free pass, including a 43-year-old Hall of Fame-bound one in Tom Brady.
“I think for me, being an interim head coach for 12 games, there’s two things I learned — be yourself and delegate,” Arians said in Monday’s press conference. “I don’t think you’re going to find a player, hopefully, in Arizona that ever said I (wasn’t honest with) him and there’s not going to be a player here (either). Sometimes you don’t like the truth, but I’m going to give you the truth and it’ll hurt for a minute, but it’s real. Don’t come ask me a question and think I’m going to sugarcoat it, because you’re going to get the real answer. I think our guys appreciate that.”
Brady welcomes that style as he said in an NFL Network on Saturday according to Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times. Arians’ and Brady’s latest comments on their player-coach working relationship continued a season-long narrative on how the two would fit together with differing offensive styles and when the Bucs stumbled in November.
Starting Point
Issues aside, Arians promoted the idea of bringing Brady to Tampa in the first place per ESPN’s Jenna Laine via Twitter. Since then, the Arians-Brady duo has transformed a playoff-dormant franchise into a winner.
First Jason Licht lured Bruce Arians out of retirement. Then Arians sparked the idea this offseason and even spoke it into existence at the NFL combine: get Tom Brady. That chain of events proved to be the catalyst for ending a 13-year playoff drought
The Bucs seek their first 11-win season since 2005 on Sunday against Atlanta. Arians called getting to 11 wins “rare” in Monday’s press conference.
Finale Approach
Arians plans to go all-in on Sunday’s game against the Falcons (4-11), a team the Bucs squeaked by 31-27 in Week 15. A victory gives the Bucs the fifth seed in the NFC playoffs and a trip to the NFC East Division winner, a squad with a losing record regardless of which team makes it in Week 17.
“We’re going to play to win,” Arians said in Monday’s press conference. “To have a chance to get to 11-5, keep that seeding – we want that seeding just for pride. We don’t care who we play, it’s more for pride. I’d probably have to beat some guys in the head with a stick to try and get them not to play anyway. I talked to them about it before and (they said), ‘I’m playing.’ We’re going to practice and play like everything depends on it. It’s not going to be an easy game, either.”
A fifth seed also means the Bucs could go to the Superdome in the second round and face the second-seeded New Orleans Saints for the third time this season. Drawing the sixth seed means a likely second-round trip to snowy and cold Lambeau Field to face the top seed Green Bay Packers, which will have a bye. Tampa Bay Times reporters Rick Stroud and Joey Knight talked about New Orleans being a better second round destination for the Bucs on the Times’ sports podcast on Monday.
The top two seeds in the NFC could change, however, depending on what happens in Week 17 according to ESPN’s Kevin Seifert.
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