Bruce Arians Believed Tom Brady Could Play Another Season

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Bruce Arians spent three seasons as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' head coach before handing the keys to the ship over to Todd Bowles and becoming a senior advisor for the organization. During his tenure, Arians helped lead the Bucs to their second-ever Super Bowl win in 2020 and took the team to the NFC Championship game in 2021.
A large part of that success during his time as head coach, came thanks to the greatest quarterback of all time, Tom Brady.
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Brady just recently announced his retirement, but Arians believed that there was at least a slight chance that Brady could return and play another season with the Buccaneers during an appearance on SiriusXM NFL Radio.
"I think you never knew with Tom," Arians responded. "What he went through was really pretty hard, personally. And he did an unbelievable job of trying to put it aside and went out and played at a high level. So I didn’t know if that was going to get to him. He can still sling it now, he can still sling it."
Prior to the Buccaneers' exit from the playoffs, there was optimism that Brady would return and play at least another season with the club if he indeed decided not to retire.
Brady can obviously still play ball at the highest level, but for him to continue to play and possibly harm his legacy it didn't make much sense for him to return to Tampa Bay while the team is reconstructing its' staff and could be in the beginning stages of what some would call a "rebuild".
Even though some, like Arians, may have believed there was a possibility of Brady coming back for one last go, that wasn't the case. Brady is sailing off into the sunset, while the Buccaneers now have work to do in figuring out who will replace the NFL GOAT.
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Caleb is from Nashville, TN and graduated from Florida State University in 2018 with majors in Sociology and History. He has previously written for an FSU outlet and started covering the Buccaneers in March of 2022. Caleb is an avid sports fan and former host of the Tribeoholics podcast. You can follow Caleb on Twitter @chsnole
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