Arians an exception to NFL’s youth movement
Jarrett Bell: 66-year-old the league’s oldest-ever head coaching hire
INDIANAPOLIS – Once again, the man in the funny hat is bucking a trend.
That was evident as each of the NFL’s eight new coaches met the media on Wednesday, like some rookie initiation, at the annual scouting combine.
After Brian Flores, 38, started the podium parade, the pattern continued. Kliff Kingsbury, 39. Zac Taylor, 35. Matt LaFleur, 39. On Thursday, Rams coach Sean McVay, 33, passes through.
Then there was Bruce Arians, decked out in his typical Kangol hat. When the Buccaneers lured him back to work in January, he became the oldest NFL head coaching hire ever, right smack in the middle of this youth movement.
Arians is 66. A little more than a year ago, he tearfully announced his “retirement” after fizzling out with the Cardinals. Now he’s back. Like so many AARP members, he retired and moved to Florida.
Remember, Arians didn’t get his first NFL head coaching gig until he was 60. Before that, he won the first of two NFL coach-of-the-year awards while filling in for Chuck Pagano as an interim coach.
“I wasn’t happier for anyone more than Vic Fangio,” Arians said of the Broncos’ 60-year-old, first-time coach, who as defensive coordinator supplemented Chicago’s Matt Nagy, 40, and helped the Bears win the NFC North crown. “He deserved to be a head coach, in my opinion. I
was really pulling for him and pushing him whenever I got a chance.”
Take Arians and Fangio out of the equation and the average age of the six other new hires is 39.
Arians knows. In the copycat NFL, where McVay’s success fueled opportunities for others as so many teams sought young, offensive-minded types with track records coaching quarterbacks, he’s essentially carrying the torch for old-school coaches.
Bill Belichick, 66, surely represented as he schooled McVay a few weeks ago to win another Super Bowl crown. But like it or not, Arians’ load in trying to revive the Bucs and take talented quarterback Jameis Winston to another level, includes a “generational” measure. Likewise, the younger coaches getting chances with lighter résumés have some built-in second-guessing attached to the pressures of winning.
“The young guys, God bless ’em,” Arians said. “It’s hard to get (an NFL coaching job). There are only 32 of these . ... The jury’s out every year. It’s all about wins and losses.”
Arians maintains he inherits an offense that has more depth at skill positions than he’s ever had — strong stuff, considering his time with the Steelers and Colts. He will be challenged to prove the worth of that (provided they keep wideout DeSean Jackson and slot receiver Adam Humphries, who are set to become free agents) by winning in perhaps the NFL’s most competitive division. The other NFC South teams are led by quarterbacks Drew Brees, Cam Newton and Matt Ryan, underscoring why it is critical for Winston to cut down on the mistakes and inconsistency that marked his first four seasons.
In addition to making mechanical tweaks, Arians said a key for Winston will be to realize, “You can’t be Superman on every throw . ... And when you have great ones, they think they can be. But you have to pick and choose sometimes, when you want to be Superman.”
If anyone can bring out the best in Winston — or any quarterback, for that matter — it figures to be Arians. The relationship between the two goes back to when Winston was a ninth-grader who attended one of Arians’ football camps in Birmingham, Alabama, which the coach reflected on Wednesday. It was also telling to hear Arians refer to Winston by his nickname, “Jaboo.”
No, a coach doesn’t have to necessarily be young to relate to youthful quarterbacks, which might be one of the misconceptions for NFL decision-makers in assessing coaches. In Arians’ case, he acknowledges that he adjusted the way he coaches over the years.
“This generation, I think, is more active,” he said. “You have them out there doing things. They learn faster than sitting in a classroom.”
For the first time as head coach, Arians (59-35-1, including postseason) will also turn over the play-calling duties. He’s given the responsibility to coordinator Byron Leftwich, the former quarterback he once coached and who took three years to be persuaded to enter the coaching ranks.
That Leftwich and another of his former players, Todd Bowles, were available to become his coordinators helped make his decision easier when a longtime friend, Bucs GM Jason Licht, came calling for him to return to coaching. But to hear him reflect, it only took so much of a sales job to come back.
As an analyst for CBS Sports last year, he attended practices each Friday and sometimes had to contain himself as he had the chance to watch so many teams around the league.
“About Week 8, I was starting to coach,” he said. “Whoops! You can’t do that. But that really got the bug started again.”
Arians was his typical self in the booth: colorful, blunt, with a tendency to make headlines, when he seemingly floated out a feeler by maintaining that the Browns were the “only team” he’d come out of retirement to coach. Now that Browns’ job belongs to one of his protégés, Freddie Kitchens, 44.
Will he hold up? Arians insists he’s refreshed for the grind after experiencing some health scares during his Arizona tenure and twice battling cancer.
After all, before his deal with the Bucs was finalized, he had to pass a physical.
“I got a ‘C,’ ” he beamed to USA TODAY before heading to his next stop. “I got an ‘F’ for 10 years.”
No, that condition of employment was hardly viewed as an insult.
“I’m the oldest guy ever hired,” he said. “Of course I’d take one. It was probably a year since I had one. If I got one for free, why not?
“Both times I had cancer? Preventative medicine. Caught ’em both early. I’ll take physicals anytime I can get one.”