Were the Bucs right not trying to hire the next Sean McVay?
The Bucs went against this year’s NFL trend by hiring 66-year-old Bruce Arians
Rams coach Sean McVay, left, and Patriots coach Bill Belichick speak before Super Bowl 53. With Belichick outcoaching the young Los Angeles leader, some teams may be wondering if they made the right decision to seek "the next McVay."
(AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
By Rick Stroud
Updated 1 hour ago
TAMPA — One day after the Rams lost 13-3 to the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LIII, Bucs fans should be glad their team didn’t try to hire the next Sean McVay.
Not that there’s anything wrong with McVay, the Rams coach who got schooled in the biggest game of the year by the Patriots’ Bill Belichick, the greatest coach of all time.
At 33, McVay is special. He’s a great leader, motivator and communicator. Until Sunday, he had been a great play caller and game planner. The omelet on his face will wash away and McVay will be fine.
But what if you were one of these teams like the Cardinals, Bengals or Packers waking up Monday morning?
You should be a little nervous wondering if you settled for someone simply because they were a handsome play-caller who could grace the cover of GQ.
The NFL is a copycat league. When the Bucs’ 66-year-old coach, Bruce Arians, saw the hiring trend, he didn’t care for it.
“Every year or two, it’s so cyclical of who’s hot, you know?” Arians told me a few days before the Super Bowl.
“Everybody wants Sean and there’s only one Sean. There’s only one Kyle (Shanahan). They grew up in this business. Years ago, it had to be the Belichicks and the Parcells and all the defensive head coaches. So I was so happy for Vic Fangio (who was hired by the Broncos) because no one deserved it more than him. He’s the most ready because he’s got scars.”
Fangio, the Bears’ defensive coordinator, is 60. There’s not many marks on the faces of the Cardinals’ Cliff Kingsbury, the Bengals’ Zac Taylor or the Packers’ Matt LeFleur.
Taylor, 35, was the Rams’ quarterbacks coach last season. LeFleur, 39, was McVay’s offensive coordinator in 2017. Kingsbury, 39, spent six seasons as the head coach of Texas Tech, going 35-40. He didn’t work with McVay, but looks a lot like actor Ryan Gosling, so that’s Hollywood enough.
In the Cardinals’ news release announcing their new head coach, they made sure to mention that Kingsbury was “friends with Sean McVay,’’ as if that was the biggest job requirement.
Arians has been through it all. He worked for Paul “Bear” Bryant at Alabama. He was bypassed for NFL head coaching jobs until he went 9-3 as an interim coach for the Colts when Chuck Pagano was diagnosed with leukemia.
Arians was named the NFL’s Coach of the Year, then won it again when he went 11-5 in his second season has Cardinals coach.
“If you’ve been in one system and something happens, you can’t call (Sean) and ask how to fix it,” Arians said. “You got to know how to fix it. You can’t be a little position coach and have five guys and a defensive tackle has a problem or is creating a problem, you better know how to handle it.
“I’m not saying these other guys don’t. But that to me, you’re talking about 65 guys and a coaching staff to manage. It’s a lot of egos. I don’t agree with this trend and I’m not pulling for anybody in this game but I’m pulling for Sean because I really respect this guy. His respect for the history of the game. He’s just different for his age.”
And yet, McVay was no match for Belichick, who won his sixth Super Bowl as Patriots coach.
Belichick confused Rams quarterback Jared Goff and confounded McVay, who could never get his offense into a rhythm Sunday. The Patriots started in zone defense, took away the big plays downfield and eliminated the Rams’ man-to-man beaters with all the shifts, jet sweeps and bunch formations.
Predictably, they were unpredictable, shedding their man coverage scheme for the Super Bowl.
“It was a great game plan,” McVay said. “There is no other way to say it but I got out-coached.”
Arians complimented McVay for surrounding himself with older, proven assistants such as defensive coordinator Wade Phillips and special teams coordinator John Fassel.
“It’s amazing. I got to watch Bill Cowher do it,” Arians said. “I got to watch Mike Tomlin do it. Sean was smart. He hired Wade. He’s got John Fassel. So he can stay in his lane. He can handle that team, though. But he can really focus on his lane and that was the only one smart move I made at Temple was I hired a 66-year-old, former head coach-defensive coordinator, Paul Davis. He was a head coach at Mississippi State in ’61.
“He was a guy I could go (complain) to. That’s what I tell all these young coaches, have an old cat. With (Georgia coach) Kirby Smart. I said, ‘Go get you somebody you can bitch to.’ You can’t bitch to a young coach because he’ll go home and tell his wife and the (stuff) is everywhere.”
Arians doesn’t have to worry about that. He has a veteran coaching staff that has been with him at other stops along the road. Defensive coordinator Todd Bowles was the Jets head coach the past four years. Special teams coordinator Keith Armstrong spent the past 10 seasons in Atlanta.
“I wasn’t pining to coach again,” Arians said. “I love it. With ownership, (general manager) Jason Licht and Todd and all the guys coming back, I was like, yeah, I’m ready to do this again. We can win and win fast. With Jameis (Winston). I really believe in Jameis.”
In the end, the Bucs probably did well to zig while the rest of the NFL zagged when it came to hiring a head coach.
They needed more than a pretty face or the next Sean McVay.
The original just got out-coached in the Super Bowl. Patriots 13, Maroon 5, Rams 3.