It was supposed to happen in Week Four, but a hurricane triggered a postponement. On Sunday, the tempest in a tumbler who coached the Buccaneers to a Super Bowl win will finally be added to the team’s Ring of Honor.
Despite only coaching the Bucs for three seasons, Bruce Arians gets his permanent honor at halftime of Sunday’s critical late-season game against the Panthers.
“In my wildest dreams, I never imagined being in somebody’s Ring of Honor,” Arians said, via Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times. “They didn’t have to do this.”
It became easier for them to do it, because they had an open spot. It happened thanks to the abrupt removal of Super Bowl-winning coach Jon Gruden after the 2021 email scandal, which included some over-the-top remarks from Gruden about ownership.
Arians, who stepped away 17 days after Tom Brady ended a 40-day retirement, clearly misses his prior gig.
“Would I love to be coaching?” Arians told Stroud. “Yeah. It’s what you do. It kills me to go upstairs. I’m on the sideline in pregame and it kills me to have to go upstairs and just sit there. It kills me. It’s hard. It’s what I do. I’ve done it my whole life. I’m smart enough to know it’s over.”
It didn’t end right away. Arians was prowling the sideline and instigating trouble in Week Two, when receiver Mike Evans ran onto the field and knocked Saints cornerback Marshon Lattimore to the ground, drawing a suspension for Evans. Arians and the Buccaneers received a warning from the league in the aftermath of the incident.
Arians has largely been out of sight since then.
“It’s not the same,” Arians told Stroud. “That daily interaction with the players and the coaches, the relationship I’m in. . . . The new guys are told, ‘That’s the old coach. You don’t want him cussing you out.’ I just [cussed out] a couple of them for the hell of it.”
He’ll get a chance to do some cussing at halftime on Sunday. If the Bucs are struggling after two quarters against Carolina, Arians quite possibly will deliver the kind of on-field pep talk that will peel the finish from every painted surface in the stadium.
