Looking Into Former NFL Coach Bruce Arians' Time at Mississippi State
Super Bowl-winning Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Bruce Arians, announced his sudden retirement from the NFL on Wednesday.
Fellow coaches, players and fans have showered Arians with support since he revealed his decision while reflecting on some of the top moments of his career. Arians and quarterback Tom Brady led the Bucs to their second Super Bowl victory in 2021. His record of 31-18 is the best in program history, and he has made a case for himself to enter the Hall of Fame through his long list of honors and accolades.
But before Arians became a well-known NFL coach, he was an assistant at Mississippi State.
The former college quarterback out of Virginia Tech took his first full-time collegiate job with the Bulldogs in 1978 as the running backs and wide receivers coach. The team was coming off of a 5-6 season under head coach Bob Tyler and needed to turn things around. In Arians' first season on the staff, MSU posted a 6-5 record-- not bad, but not good enough to keep Tyler around as the head coach for another season. Emory Bellard was hired as Mississippi State's new head coach in 1979, and he kept Arians on the staff. That season, the Bulldogs had even bigger struggles and finished with a dismal 3-8 record. In 1980, the team made a huge turnaround with a 9-3 record and a Sun Bowl appearance.
Arians moved on from college football for a little while at the end of the successful 1980 season. He spent 1981 and 1982 with the Alabama Crimson Tide as a running backs coach before leaving the SEC for a bigger position in a smaller program. From 1983 to 1989, Arians took over as the head coach of the Temple Owls and led the team to a 27-39 record over those six years. Arians' time as the team's head coach was ended, so he moved on to bigger things-- the NFL, to be exact. He spent four seasons as a running backs coach on the Kansas City Chiefs Staff.
After 12 seasons away from Mississippi State, Arians made his return in 1993. This time, he was given the challenging task of being the offensive coordinator of the team by head coach Jackie Sherrill. His Bulldogs went 3-6-2 in his first season as the team's offensive coordinator but had quite the turnaround in 1994. That year, MSU posted an 8-4 record and reached the Peach Bowl for just the second time in program history. Arians' last season with the Bulldogs came in 1995, and he left after the team posted a 3-8 record.
Mississippi State was ultimately the last lengthy collegiate stop of Arians' career, minus a brief season at Alabama in 1997. Although he had his seasons of difficulty, Arians ultimately did what every NFL coach hopes to do: win the biggest game in all of professional football as a guy who started his career at MSU.
