The Buccaneers will have a key component of Cardinals Southeast in the fold. Todd Bowles will, in fact, choose Tampa Bay over Chicago.
Bowles and the Bucs worked out offset language in his contract, Chris Mortensen of ESPN.com reports (Twitter link), adding the recently fired Jets coach will become the Bucs’ defensive coordinator.
A possible Bruce Arians-Bowles reunion had been planned for around six weeks, assuming the Jets did follow through on firing the latter and that the former received a head coaching job, Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News tweets.
Arians will be taking Bowles, Byron Leftwich and Harold Goodwin with him to Tampa Bay. More former Arizona assistants may well be en route. But when the Broncos hired Vic Fangio to be their head coach, Bowles — who has known Matt Nagy for decades — the Bears entered the equation. However, Bowles will be following Arians, leaving the Bears with a DC vacancy.
One of those assistants will be former Jets DC Kacy Rodgers, per Mehta (on Twitter). Rodgers will coach the Bucs’ defensive line. Bowles tabbed Rodgers to follow him for more than a month, Mehta notes. Rodgers dealt with health concerns this year but returned to the Jets’ sideline shortly after taking a leave of absence. He does not have a history with Arians, coming to the Jets from Miami when Bowles was hired.
Bowles will replace Mike Smith as Tampa Bay’s full-time DC. He oversaw two top-10 defenses in Arizona before taking the New York HC job. After a brief period of uncertainty, the 55-year-old coach can again go light on winter-gear packing.
Only 1 interview for a DC position? Oh, the rampid racism in the league!
So true. There should be a rule requiring them to interview a white guy to make it fair. It isn’t right that these good old boys keep getting ahead because of their personal connections
*rampant
Most black head coaches besides Tomlin coach very conservative, I’m not at all saying this in any racial terms. Not sure why
Most have Uncle Tom tendencies as that is the only way the white power structure would allow them to ascend.
The Bucs have a solid staff now. They have some good players on offense, not sure what their running back situation is but Winston can be a ok QB, not great but decent, if he cuts back in the Interceptions. They need some work on defense though from what I saw last year out of them when I watched s couple games. Curious to see how they do this next season and going forward. Pulling for Arians more than anything, I’m a bit fan of the guy and I thought he should’ve had the Colts job and they should’ve let Pugano walk instead of letting Arians go to the Cards. Arians is a hell of a coach.
Nagy is 40, I guess if they met when he was 20 then you could say they’ve known each other for decades
Nagy’s dad coached Bowles in high school, and Bowles is 15 years Nagy’s senior, so they could in fact have known each other for decades per the article.
The franchise that recently drafted a kicker in the second round would naturally construct a coaching staff of losers. Bucs will be drafting in the top 3 for the forseeable future.
Arians will only be coach for 3 years and then he will get fired! Why would Arians hire Bowles to be his DC? What did Bowles do in NY that would make Arians hire him? If I remember, Bowles had a defense that ranked near the bottom of the league the entire time he was in NY
Now that Bowles if off the board I hope the bears can sign Marvin Lewis for DC
No
I am waiting for KimJongUn2.0 to comment on this post about warm weather… GO!