you had the story and I peeled back the curtain a little bit
yesterday
that you know, I had just a vague idea that you had
something significant
and
what in the world's going on and I said yesterday because we
were talking about Lamar Jackson. The first thing
I thought of is all the more Jax is getting traded. And Peter
has the scoop. That was the first place. My mind went.
I didn't even think, even though I was kind of waiting
and watching and wondering if Bruce Arians was going to step
down. Yeah, did you talk about? Got about about that yesterday.
Did ya think about that yesterday with Aryans? Because
we did talk about it on the phone a little bit?
Yeah, the idea that ition that this was coming.
Well, that two hours after Tom, Brady unretired. I got a tip
that the next shoe to fall is Aryans is going to be out and
I just wasn't able to substantiate it and the next
morning. We kind of hinted around
that on PFT live the morning. After Brady. I'm retired that
there was a number of there were two thoughts in
the building one.
They really were concerned. He was trying to
Because way to another team, quite possibly San Francisco.
And to now that Brady was back, there was a belief that that
whether he made a demand or not, and I heard Jason light on
Rich Eisen yesterday saying he never demanded. It will part of
being Tom. Brady is
you don't have to demand it. You don't have to get your
hands dirty. There are ways to get your point across. You
don't even have to say it directly. You let Dawn you do
it or you let somebody else two layers down. Send a message to
somebody in the Buccaneers organization. That way. You got
your hands clean.
You got complete plausible.
My ability, you never ordered the code red. It happened
way below where you are to someone way below the top of
the Buccaneers organization and it filters up. And they
understand if you want this guy back, that's what you got to
do. And there are people who are going to believe that there
are people who are going to firmly. Believe that
the timeline
cries out that this wasn't your average normal
coach decides to walk off into the sunset on March 30th.
And Mike, I think that
logic says that there's smoke there. There's no question
about it.
And
I tried in two different ways other than in the conversation
we had in the last few days with with Aryans to find out
whether there was anything to it. And and I have always
believed, and you just said this,
I've always believed that a person.
Tom Brady, I'm not even talking about. I don't even mean
a player like Tom Brady
a person like Tom Brady
has the ability to get a point across
re
and not have to say it directly.
And again, I don't know anything that would directly
tie him
to
asking the Bucks to get rid of Aryans if he was going to come
back. I know nothing the only thing. Rhino is what Aryans
told me which is
in his words, a pile of it. And so
and so that will be his
way of saying it and that will be his belief and what he is
passing on.
But Mike what you say is, right? There's a lot of smoke
there at some point, hopefully sooner than later, but maybe
not until
Seth Wickersham writes. The book in 12 years
or whoever does.
You know, maybe you will at some point,
and maybe I will. But the point is right. Now, we don't have
proof that it happened. We have suspicions that it might have
happened,
but we don't have the proof.
I guess the follow-up to it's better to be. Feared would be.
It's better to be buzzed. That would be the better to be
boost. It's better to be boozed. That's it.
That's the story of
the three years of Bruce Arians, in Tampa Bay including
the to Tom. Brady. It's better to be. Used
coming from Seth Wickersham in
2029, but you're right. There's a story that's going to come
out eventually and it's inevitable that it's going to
come out and it's just
I was on radio with the afternoon Show
on wda in Tampa.
They reached out and invited me on. And I
did a quick little Twitter
research on the show and on the host and it was obvious. I was
walking into a lion's den that they don't agree with many of
the things that I have to say about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers
and Funny anytime you say things that you believe that
may not be popular among a fan base. They just assume you hate
the team
and you're just trying to stir up crap and
I wasn't going to go on and I thought, you know, wait
a minute. I criticize guys like Aaron Rodgers for only ever
going on a friendly platform. Like the Pat McAfee safe space
that he's on every Tuesday. So I said, I'll do it. I'll do it.
I've let them say what they want to say, and we'll talk
a throw. And one of the things I said to him is, you know,
there's a lot of circumstantial evidence here and
circumstantial evidence gets a bad rap,
circumstantial evidences value.
Evidence. I go to bed at night.
My cars outside. There's no snow on it. I wake up the next
morning, there's snow on it, but it's not snowing, but
the circumstantial evidence is it snowed?
So when you see something happen, this light first one,
we talked about this the other night first one since Jimmy
Johnson in 1994 who disappears in late March. And obviously,
there was a hell of a story behind that one.
This is not normal. This is not usual. So it cries out for
scrutiny. It cries out for an examination, and it cries. Eyes
out for reporting eventually on what exactly happened because
this isn't the usual
season ends coach has done and he says,
I'm out. He locked in for three months. He was all in
all in and as he tells me, he was all in until Tom. Brady was
coming back. And that's when I decided. Hey, Now's the Time to
Leave and the average person. I think would look at that. And
say, why would you think that's the time to leave? That's
the time
you, you utter a gigantic sigh of relief that this season
won't be.
Potential crap show without Tom Brady.
I got a year here where I can keep doing what I've been doing.
I talked to somebody at the end of the season and it may have
been you Peter about the possibility of the Aryans walks
away into the sunset and whoever I was talking to about,
it said, why would he
he's got it made,
why wouldn't he stay for another year with Tom? Brady?
He's not working nearly as hard as other coaches and he made no
bones about it. He reveled in it. Why would you walk away
from that situation?
I think there's two reasons and
if if it is as he says
look,
you know Bruce Arians is not the guy who sleeps in his
office
or who gets there at 4:30 in the morning and leaves at midnight.
He's just not that guy
and I think
The most logical thing is exactly what his words were.
I think, one of the reasons I believe and look for people who
don't know.
And it's not that big a deal, but Arians recently, as Sam
farmer and I both of whom both of us have written extensively
about Aryans for years. And he asked us if, you know, if we
could keep something quiet for a while, he would
let us break a story. He'd give us the high sign when it was
when it was ready to go. And my first reaction was, it's never
going to hold, but he told us what it was.
As we agreed and he told us what it was.
And and so my first thought was
this is, this is crazy.
But in that first conversation, he spoke for about 10 minutes,
pretty passionately
about
the state of
black coaching and minorities in coaching and you go back and
you look at Bruce, Arians History,
Bruce Arians at Virginia Tech
in late. 60s, early 70s, I forget exactly what it was.
But Bruce Arians was a quarterback at Virginia Tech.
An option quarterback, believe it or not.
And his roommate
in college,
was the father of Tiki and Ronde Barber, you know,
the eventual father
who's a black man.
And so,
and which, in those times, in those days in the South was
pretty rare. And if you look at his coaching,
Staffs over the years,
they were always populated,
you know with
more black coaches than,
you know, were the norm in the NFL
and he said one thing when we were first talking about it. He
goes listen.
If
I give Todd Bowles the team
with Blaine Gabbert and Kyle Trask is the quarterback.
And he goes, 6 and 11
are ego, 7 and 10.
And then next year is just as bad in there on this Perpetual
search for a quarterback. Todd's going to get fired and
his second chance. He will not succeed, and he'll never get
a chance again.
And it's just he said, what, what opportunities do black
coaches get? Most of them crappy
and he said so, in this particular case, when Brady
came back,
I said now is the time because now Todd Bowles is going to
have a chance this year
to win a Super Bowl.
Maybe he will, maybe he won't. But now he's going to have
a chance
and Mike. That's the one thing about this story. I texted
Jonathan Jones of CBS Sports yesterday and said,
I thought you wrote a great column in his column in essence was
look, I don't know what happened with Brady, and
whether he strong-armed Aryans either. I don't, I don't know
what happened. But let's not forget
the significant thing in here
at a time when the NFL
is crying out for, more minority representation on
coaching, staffs, and as head coaches at that time.
Here's the guy who has been the Godfather of that. So let's
appreciate
what he's done. And that's kind of, I mean, that's
How I felt when I wrote the story, I wrote the other night
and Peter one thing I said yesterday, just kind of
occurred to me is Chris Simms and I were talking it through
and I need to write this at PFT. The league would be very
wise to get Bruce. Arians involved in the broader efforts
to get owners
to think differently
and to act differently and who better
than Bruce, Arians
to walk into the room full of oligarchs
and tell them like it is,
who better than him?
Whoo. Whoo. Whoo. It'd be better suited
to do that to speak the hard truths
in his own Charming, S, and F bomb way,
then Bruce Arians,
it would be perfect. And it's exactly what the league should do
because he's figured something out that plenty of owners
and coaches have not
and whatever that is. They need to sprinkle some of it onto
those teams out there that are wondering as the league is
perplexed and dismayed.
And flabbergasted
by the fact that the mindset after all these years hasn't
changed the level of comfort.
When you get down to your finalists,
the white owner gravitating toward the white head coach
time. And again, I said this back after the Flores lawsuit
was filed, when people are saying, does it have Merit?
It's like, well, look at it this way, you flip a coin 500
times. It comes up. Heads 490 times.
Probably got a problem with your coin.
And Aaron's is kind of guy that can help them fix the coin,
and they definitely should explore ways. They can
incorporate him in communicating directly with
the owners and other coaches to get them to do things the way he
did things, and that would be
the best. Possible
post coaching job that Bruce Arians could have
you need to write that today? I think
otherwise I'm going to steal it for Monday
on my list. Mike. It's on my list Mike Mike here. Here's one
other thing. I think
it's important to think about.
That.
So it was very interesting at the NFL meetings and I am going
to Pat myself on the back here because about six weeks ago.
I wrote that
the NFL needs to mandate that every team
have a black or minority coach, who touches the quarterback,
who has something to do on the coaching staff with
the quarterback. And I'm not talking about quality control,
get the coffee.
You know, mimeographed and I'm exaggerating that you don't
mimeograph anymore. But you know, make copies of the game
plan, but you know,
not that. Okay. I'm talking about sitting in meetings and
being around the quarterback in the offensive coordinator
every day. And yeah,
you know the role could vary but and voila six weeks later
the NFL does exactly that. But what they did also in there
which
I think a lot of people are sort of ambivalent about is
they included women in that
in that
in that little codicil and
and now, you know, the rule basically reads that every team
has to have on its offensive. Coaching staff.
A person who is in the room, you know, as these decisions
are made his game plans are formulated blah blah blah,
and it's Got to be a minority or woman
and Aryans was big on that, because he said, I didn't even
put this in the story, but it was funny. He said
because, you know, he had eleven
black assistant coaches,
you know, on his last staff in Tampa
11. I mean, that's that's almost half a coaching staff.
But but, and then he said, it was almost like an aside,
he goes and, you know, I just did the women because
I put the women on our staff because
I think they deserve it. I think it's wrong. There aren't
women coaching in the game.
And he said, the two women that we have are really, really
good. And one is the assistant strength and conditioning
coach. One is the assistant d-line coach, Lori
Locust. I always mispronounce,
the strength, and conditioning coaches, and I apologized to
her for that. But Aryans also thought that, that was
important because it is
in It's the way of the future. Who knows
if there will ever be in our lifetime? A woman offensive
coordinator, but
Arians has talked to me about this before he goes,
these women understand that everybody's going to be
skeptical about him.
That although they can't do the job. So they have to be over
qualified. They have to know more about the game than a man
does, because everybody is going to be Looking look at
that and
and putting out the little trick questions
for him at all that. And so
I think he ought to be
whatever recognized for that as well.