Todd Bowles to take over as head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers,with Bruce Arians stepping into a front-office role…
Bruce Arians will rejoin the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as head coach after his retirement, the team announced Tuesday night.
The four-year contract includes a one-year option.
In 2017, following his sixth season as the Arizona Cardinals’ coach, Arians declared his retirement. During the 2018 season, he served as a game analyst for CBS.
Bryan Glazer, the owner of the Buccaneers, said in a statement, “We are excited to have Bruce Arians leading our club. Over the past 20 years, he has become one of the NFL’s most respected coaches. Our main objective was to find the greatest coach who could inspire our players and progress our team during this process. Bruce’s growth and career accomplishments have helped some of our league’s best players, and we are thrilled to have him continue that work with our group.
Arians, 66, tweeted his excitement at joining the squad after the announcement.
As the head coach of the @Buccaneers, I feel privileged and proud! to work together with the amazing Glazer Family and General Manager Jason Licht. Now is the time to go to work! Tweet.com/IlZE5duEME #GoBucs #tampaBAy #buccobruce Twitter
Bruce Arians, using the handle BruceArians, tweeted January 9, 2019
In theory, he was under contract with the Cardinals through the 2019 season. The league office first advised the Buccaneers that no compensation was necessary, but the Cardinals argued late in the game that they should keep Arians’ rights.
Rather than engage in a protracted legal battle, the parties chose to resolve their differences by exchanging sixth- and seventh-round picks, allowing the Bucs to sign Arians. According to a source who talked with ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the rights to Arians and Arizona’s seventh-round pick are exchanged for the Buccaneers’ sixth-round selection in 2019.
It was expected that Todd Bowles, the former head coach of the Jets who was fired last month after three straight losing seasons in New York, would join Arians as a defensive coordinator in Tampa Bay, sources told ESPN’s Dianna Russini. But Bowles is now also being considered to replace Vic Fangio as the Chicago Bears defensive coordinator, league sources informed ESPN. An agreement to have Fangio coach the Denver Broncos has been reached.
Sources claim that a contract between Bowles and the Buccaneers has not yet been finalized.
Bowles has ties to the Tampa Bay and Chicago staffs. Matt Nagy, the Bears coach, was Bowles’ father’s coach. Since Bowles’ days at Temple with Arians in the mid-1980s, the two have remained friends.
Bowles served as Arians’ defensive coordinator for the Cardinals from 2013 to 2014; this position helped him secure the head coaching job with the Jets.
On Wednesday on “The Rich Eisen Show,” Arians said of Bowles that he was “like a son to me.” “My main conversation with him was his future. Everyone experiences termination. I can’t even count how many times I’ve been let go. And this is the outcome of that. He thought it very carefully. I was making every effort to sell when this happened.
