After eight years of head coaching, Bruce Arians finally won his Super Bowl in 2021. It was also the season when Brady was traded to Tampa Bay from New England. Interestingly, however, the former head coach didn’t get the most out of his superstar QB.
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During his appearance on “Pardon My Take,” Arians revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic hindered Brady’s transition to the Buccaneers. For context, TB12 joined the team right before the pandemic hit in 2020.
This meant that immediately after Brady’s signing, everything from preseason training camps to practice matches was canceled. The restrictions were stringent, with social distancing being the holy grail for survival. And as Arians noted, these precautions led to Tom Brady’s absence in the locker room.
“We couldn’t be in the locker room [because of the pandemic]. Even my wife met Tom Brady for the first time on the stage at the Super Bowl, that’s how crazy that year was.”
Bruce’s complaint makes a lot of sense. Securing a GOAT like Brady without the opportunity to create ideal conditions for him to ease into a new environment is detrimental. Though in hindsight, this seems like a moot point because the Bucs eventually went on to win the Lombardi Trophy.
It should also be noted that before Brady’s arrival, the Bucs last had a playoff victory in 2002. So Brady’s signing was equally important from a mentality-building perspective, and locker-room interactions have proven to be a good practice to foster this over the years.
That said, missing preseason with Brady was just the tip of the iceberg for Arians, as playing in empty stadiums was another challenge for the Bucs HC.
Bruce Arians recalls the challenge of playing in an empty stadium
Bruce recalled that as players and personnel were adjusting to the pandemic-stricken world, playing in empty stadiums was like the final nail in the coffin of their struggles. These challenges were most apparent when the Bucs had to travel away to Chicago and New York at night. Playing in the chilly cold at these stadiums with no crowd support was dreadful, as Arians recalled.
“That was a crazy year you know… to play those games in empty stadiums and we pull into Chicago, we pull into New York, it’s a night game and there’s no energy right? It took a long time to get used to that.”
And just when Brady & Co. got used to the silence in the stadiums, certain teams started adding fake crowd noises which further confused players. Tom Brady was publicly against this, as the fake crowd noises were always on the high, unlike a real crowd, where decibels go up and down. This was yet another challenge for the team.
“You’re screaming the whole day to people on the sideline, which is very unique to a game because normally it ebbs and flows. But with that pumped-in crowd noise, it doesn’t ebb and flow — it just flows,” Brady said on Peyton Manning’s ESPN+ streaming series, ‘Peyton’s Places.’
It’s quite commendable that the Bucs managed to win despite all these challenging subplots.
