Remarkable 2012 season with Colts shaped Arians
TAMPA — When Bruce Arians received his first opportunity to be an NFL head coach seven years ago with the Indianapolis Colts, he did so under the most difficult of circumstances, thrust into the role when Chuck Pagano was diagnosed with with leukemia during the Week 4 open date.
Arians made it clear that he was simply a fill-in. The light in Pagano’s office remained on. No one sat in Pagano’s seat on the team bus. Pagano’s locker at Lucas Oil Stadium was prepped every game day. When the team broke the huddle after ever practice, it was always with, “1-2-3, Chuck.”
“I never considered myself the head coach,” Arians said. “We had a head coach. I just took a larger decision-making role.”
Still, what Arians did during that 2012 season, leading the Colts to a 9-3 record in Pagano’s absence, gave him cachet he had never received as an NFL assistant for 19 years, proof that he could lead a locker room. And after that season, he received his first NFL head coaching job in Arizona.
But that season wasn’t about Arians getting his shot. It was “a miracle season,” as Arians describes, one that triumphed through adversity on the field and off it. And along the way, Arians made an impact on the Colts organization that stands the course of time.
“I wasn’t here then,” current Colts coach Frank Reich said. “But I know this for sure; people still talk about Bruce. He just makes an impact everywhere he goes. … He built himself an incredible reputation and resume with how he deals with players and coaches and has just been a winner everywhere he goes.”
This was before “no risk it, no biscuit,” before the cool flat cap, before he was anointed the quarterback whisperer. Arians was in uncharted territory, and he was nervous.
Before Arians’ first game as interim head coach, Colts owner Jim Irsay predicted that Indianapolis was going to beat the Packers and he was going to deliver the game ball to Pagano in the hospital. Arians said the only time he’d ever felt so much pressure was as an Alabama assistant coaching Bear Bryant’s final game 30 years earlier.
The Colts fell behind 21-3 at halftime, and Arians walked into a locker room full of hanging heads.
But Arians was calm. He knew his players were too emotional with everything swirling. He told them a comeback begins with one play. Do your job. Get a turnover.
Make something happen. It will snowball from there.
The Colts came back to win 30-27 on a TD pass from Andrew Luck to Reggie Wayne with 39 seconds left. Arians says it was one of the three biggest wins in his career.
“There was just that look in his eyes where he knew we were going to win the game,” said Bucs quarterbacks coach Clyde Christensen, who had the same role on that Colts staff. “He didn’t flinch, which is probably his No. 1 characteristic. That’s what I remember about it is that you looked into his eyes and you believed he was going to win that game. That’s going to happen. And then we just went out and played like that.”
Pagano, now the defensive coordinator of the Bears, had just been hired by the Colts that offseason following a 2-14 season and an acrimonious parting with franchise quarterback Peyton Manning. Indianapolis was in rebuild mode, with a new staff and No. 1 overall pick Luck quarterbacking an offense that had six rookie starters. The team placed 13 players on injured reserve over the course of the season.
While Pagano received treatment, Arians would bring Pagano his iPad loaded with game film and practice reports to his hospital bed every week to discuss game planning. Initially, those sessions weren’t as productive because Pagano wouldn’t be able to talk because of the massive headaches he was suffering, but gradually, Arians said he started to see Pagano get better.
Wins began to stack up. Of the nine games the Bucs won under Arians, eight were by a touchdown or less. Confidence and momentum built, culminating with a surprise visit from Pagano at halftime before the Colts won 20-13 in Kansas City on Dec. 23 thanks to a late fourth-quarter touchdown.
Pagano returned the following week, and Arians had finally received his opportunity to shine as a head coach. The Colts made the playoffs and Arians was named AFC Coach of the Year.
Arians has faced the Colts before as a head coach since that 2012 season. In 2017, his Cardinals beat the Colts in Indianapolis, 16-13 in overtime. Still, when the Bucs host the Colts on Sunday, Arians knows he will think back to that special year.
“It’s always special, and there’s always a little blue horseshoe in my heart, and also because I grew up a Colts fan, the Baltimore Colts,” said Arians, who grew up in York, Pa., just north of Baltimore. “That was my team. My brother was a Packers fan and we’d always fight over it. But it was a very special year that I’ll never, ever forget.”