Just three days after the Buccaneers lost to the Cowboys in the wild-card round, the team announced that they had fired six offensive assistant coaches including offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich and three others had retired. Evidently, former coach Bruce Arians was not happy with the move.
During an appearance on WDAE Radio this week, Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times reported that Arians was, “Not happy. Very unhappy. Extremely unhappy.”
“Having had some interaction with him about it. . . he’s disappointed. You know, he’s disappointed,” Stroud said, per JoeBucsFan.com. “I guess that’s the biggest thing. You know, he wanted Todd [Bowles] to have this opportunity. He wanted to keep this staff together. He wanted these [coaching] families to be together; many of them have another year on their contracts.
“Many of them thought they would be here as long as Todd is the head coach, were told as much, and that’s not the case. And so, he’s hurt by it. I don’t know if you’re going to see him around much next year.”
Arians retired after the ’21 season and his goal was to hand over the reigns—and his coaching staff—to Todd Bowles in order for him to have a familiar and established team around him. But one 8–9 season and 31–14 wild-card loss was all it took for Tampa Bay to completely upend the offensive coaching staff.
Arians was kept on by the team as a consultant this past season, but according to Stroud, he may not be around as much now.
