Bruce Arians not worried about Tom Brady’s absence from Buccaneers camp: ‘He’s all in’
leave training camp for 11 days.
And yet?
“I never had Tom Brady,” the former Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach and now team consultant told USA TODAY Sports over Zoom on Tuesday. “It’s a matter of when you’re 45 and you have way, way more things in your life going on than a 25-year-old does. Tom needed the time.
“I think it was a really good move for everybody.”
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No reason for worry?
“You can ask the players in the huddle who get their butt chewed out by him,” Arians quipped. “They all know he’s laser-focused and ready to roll. So I would say to anyone: Don’t worry about Tom Brady.
“One thing about Tom Brady is you never have to worry about focus. He’s all in, or he wouldn’t be there.”
Brady’s last nine months are nonetheless rare for an NFL player. The seven-time Super Bowl champion quarterback announced his retirement in January and his subsequent unretirement in March. He reported for training camp in July, then left for an 11-day training camp excused absence in early August.
Arians, who himself retired in March after three years as Tampa Bay head coach including a Super Bowl title, can relate in some ways. Like Brady, Arians retired and then returned to the NFL. And like he says of Brady, Arians’ first retirement—from a five-year Cardinals head coach stint, he took the 2018 season off – had more going on in his life than in his early assistant NFL coaching days. Multiple cancer bouts scared Arians, as did a November 2016 postgame hospital trip on account of chest tightness.