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Bruce Arians stepped down from head coach at the start of the 2022 off-season, handing the reins to Todd Bowles. Bowles, the longtime defensive coordinator, now gets a chance to take over a winnable team and work to build the team in his image.
However, since Bruce Arians is still employed by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as a senior advisor to general manager Jason Licht, he still seems to be attending practice often.
He explained his rationale for handing over the spot to Todd Bowles this year as Tom Brady who came out of retirement:
“I was going the other way. I was thinking he wasn’t going to play. I was thinking about who are we going to get? Who wants to trade? There wasn’t anybody to draft. That was obvious. Me, to the public, I was fine with the two we had: Blaine (Gabbert) and Kyle (Trask).
Bruce Arians believes he'd probably still be coaching hadn't Brady returned
Bruce Arians wanted to hand over the head coaching role to Todd Bowles for a while. However, he wanted to hand it over when the situation was stable. He did not want to put Bowles in a position where he would have had to build the team around a new quarterback in Brady's absence.
Which is why, when the veteran unretired, Arians felt confident in handing Bowles the keys to the kingdom.
So Tom Brady's return largely influenced Arians' plans to stay one more year with the Buccaneers. Brady's return meant that there was a stable setup for Todd Bowles to transition into.
As per Bruce Arians, the thing he values the most is that the assistants that have worked with him have gone on to achieve greater things. He opined,
“If I coach, those 15 wins on my résumé don’t mean as much to me as succession. Thirty-four families (of Arians’ assistants) have got jobs...This is everything. It’s the golden dream for me. I get to watch it. I know what’s going to be said. You just want to make sure our guys are taken care of. And if we win another Super Bowl, I still get to be a part of it."
It is evident that the long-time coach attributes greater value to the success of his successors than his own success. Despite not being the head coach anymore, he'll still enjoy the Bucs' success under new head coach Todd Bowles.
