TAMPA, Fla. — Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians, who continues to receive praise for giving minority coaches opportunities, said Monday that it was his personal experience being overlooked that made him want to help others get recognized.
Arians, 68, won two Super Bowls with the Pittsburgh Steelers as an assistant, but he’s coaching in his first Super Bowl as a head coach Sunday.
“I think probably because I didn’t get a shot until I was 60, and Chuck Pagano had to get sick with leukemia for me to even become a head coach,” said Arians, who as an interim head coach of the Indianapolis Colts in 2012 was named NFL Coach of the Year before finally being named head coach of the Arizona Cardinals. “I was a winning Super Bowl offensive coordinator and didn’t even get a phone call. So the lack of opportunity I think has made me want to give more opportunities to more people.”
Tampa Bay’s offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich, defensive coordinator Todd Bowles, special-teams coordinator Keith Armstrong and run-game coordinator/assistant head coach Harold Goodwin are all Black. The Buccaneers are the only team in the NFL with all Black coordinators.
The Bucs are also the first NFL team to have two female coaches on staff in a Super Bowl, with assistant defensive line coach Lori Locust and assistant strength and conditioning coach/physical therapist Maral Javadifar.
“A player is gonna ask the coach, ‘How are you gonna make me better?'” Arians said. “He doesn’t really care if the answer comes from a male or female, Black, white, brown, yellow, who — just ‘help me be better,’ Arians said. “The best teachers I had were all different races, all different ethnic groups, male and female. If you can teach, you can coach.”
“To hear voices in a staff meeting that aren’t the same, don’t look alike, but they all have input — you get better output,” Arians said. “For the players, the same thing. Not hearing the same thing over and over, to hear it from different people, different ages — from 27 to 82 — and every kind of ethnic group there is, and male and female. So, I think our players learn from that. I know I do. And it helps our staff.”
Arians took different approaches to assembling his staff. He specifically sought out a female coaching candidate to add to his staff when he got to Tampa in 2019. He wound up with two.
“It was time,” Arians said. “It was time for that door to be knocked down and allow them because they’ve been putting in the time. And they were very, very qualified. The ones we have are overly qualified.”
Locust, the mother of two boys, didn’t start playing football until age 40 and played semiprofessional football for four years. She then began coaching semi-pro and in arena leagues before getting an internship with the Baltimore Ravens. She coached in the summers at Bucs cornerbacks coach Kevin Ross’ football camp in Paulsboro, New Jersey, and was the defensive line coach for the Birmingham Alliance of American Football team before the league folded in 2019.
Javadifar’s mother, Mojgan Mobasheri, fled Iran during the Iranian Revolution in the early 1980s, imparting on her daughter, who was born in Queens, New York, “‘We’re going to break down barriers,'” Javadifar said. Javadifar holds a doctorate in physical therapy from New York Medical College and worked as a performance physical therapist in the Virginia/Washington D.C. area after playing college basketball at Pace University. Her mother couldn’t even attend sporting events in her native homeland; now Mobasheri’s daughter is coaching on the world’s biggest stage.
As far as his coordinators, Arians said he simply chose the best candidates for the job.
“That was not by design. Those are the best coaches I know,” Arians said, expressing frustration that more of his coaches weren’t considered for head-coaching opportunities.
“I was a little upset that Byron didn’t get one, because I think he’s everything that everybody is supposedly looking for — a quarterback, a play-caller and he’s African American,” Arians said, while pointing to Leftwich’s work with Tom Brady. “I don’t know what else you’re looking for, and he’s a great leader.”
“I’m throwing Keith Armstrong in the mix, too,” said Arians, who hired Armstrong after he was with the Atlanta Falcons for 11 seasons. “I think all those guys should be interviewing for head-coaching jobs. Hopefully, next year.”
Bowles, whose defense’s takeaways have been a key reason the Bucs made it to the Super Bowl, had been the head coach of the New York Jets from 2015 to 2018. They went 24-40 but did have a 10-6 season his first year in 2015. He drew interest from the Falcons, Philadelphia Eagles and Detroit Lions for their head-coaching vacancies this year, and interviewed with the Falcons and Eagles, but those teams went in other directions, while the Lions canceled the interview they had scheduled with him.
“You get frustrated a little bit, but all you can do is work,” Bowles said. “Everybody gets frustrated when they don’t get a job, and that can be any one of these coaches in the league, regardless of race, so you just try to move on and be the best coach you can be.”
Bowles empathized with Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy and other minority coaches still waiting for their first opportunities.
“His opportunity will come — I am sure of that. He’s an outstanding coach. I have a lot of respect for Eric,” Bowles said, adding, “You want to do some things to move forward but what do you do from that standpoint? I think coaches can’t be the ones moving it. It’s gotta be everybody else trying to move it. All we can do is coach and be responsible daily for what we do.”