Two-time NFL coach of the year Bruce Arians is back, after a year away from the game. He’s had plenty of health issues, including a couple of bouts with cancer. He doesn’t care about the possibility that he may end up in the hospital at some point during the season.
“It might happen again, but it won’t be that serious,” Arians tells Andrea Kremer of HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel in a profile that debuts Tuesday night at 10:00 p.m. ET. “I won’t miss work.”
“Why do you seem to take such a cavalier attitude about your health?” Kremer asks.
“You can die at any moment doing anything,” Arians says. “I mean, so why not do what you love to do? If I die on game day, have a drink. Celebrate.”
Arians, who turns 67 in October, continues to celebrate the bill of health he received when he took the job in January.
“I had to take a complete physical and I got a C,” Arians says. “I was happy as hell. I’ve been an F for ten years.”
As a coach, he’s been an A. And when it comes to promoting minority and female coaches, he’s an A-plus. All three of his coordinators plus his assistant head coach are African-American.
“They’re just the best guys that I know,” Arian said of Todd Bowles, Byron Leftwich, Keith Armstrong, and Harold Goodwin. “And it was partly by design, but it was like, ‘If I can get these guys we’re set.’”
The Buccaneers may indeed be set with Arians on the job. After years of waiting to be a head coach because he refuses to kiss ass or play politics, he turned the Cardinals around quickly -- and he now has a chance to end as 12-year playoff drought for the Buccaneers.