Mitch
Crawled Through 5 FB Fields
Without question, Bruce Arians will go down in history as one of the greatest head coaches the Arizona Cardinals have ever had...even at this point, heading into his 5th year as head coach, with a 41-24-1 record, 2 playoff berths and a trip to the NFC Championship game, one can easily make the case that Arians is the greatest head coach the Cardinals have had in Arizona.
Arians' journey to becoming an NFL head coach has already been well-chronicled. On the brink of retirement, having been let go by the Steelers as their long-time offensive coordinator, on his way to his and his wife's retirement home in Georgia, Arians received a last-ditch phone call from Colts' head coach Chuck Pagano and immediately turned his car around and headed to Indianapolis as the Colts' new play caller on offense.
When Pagano was diagnosed with leukemia early in the season, Arians took over as interim head coach and helped to guide the Colts and rookie QB Andrew Luck to a surprising 11-5 record and a playoff berth. Arians, all the while, kept a light for Pagano and handled his responsibilities with aplomb and humble deference to his long-time friend. Ironically, after Pagano returned, Arians was hospitalized on the eve of the playoffs and could only watch the Colts lose from his hospital bed.
Nevertheless, Arians was named the NFL's Coach of the Year in 2012 for his efforts with the Colts.
Quickly, Arians was hired by the Arizona Cardinals as the new head coach in 2013. His first season got off to a somewhat slow start, but his team finished strong and one game out of the playoffs at 10-6. In his second season, Arians' squad went 11-5 and earned a wild card berth before losing to the Panthers in the wild card round. For this effort and achievement, Arians was lauded once again as NFL Coach of the Year in 2014.
Perhaps his greatest coaching performance came in 2015 when the Cardinals dethroned the Seahawks as NFC West Champions and earned the NFC's #2 seed in the playoffs with a stellar 13-3 record. After an opening round bye, despite watching Aaron Rodgers throw a successful game-tying Hail Mary before a stunned crowd in Glendale, the Cardinals replied in overtime when a scrambling Carson Palmer found a wide open Larry Fitzgerald to the far side of the field and Fitzgerald weaved through Packer defenders all the way inside the Packers' 5 yard line, and then scored the game winning TD on a shovel pass.
In the 2015 NFC Championship game at Carolina, the Cardinals imploded. Palmer turned the ball over 7 times and Cam Newton picked apart the Cardinals' defense on the ground and through the air ti the tune of 476 yards and 5 TDs. It was a humiliating 49-15 defeat for Cardinals.
All the while in 2015, the Cardinals were being filmed on nearly a daily basis for an Amazon TV series called All or Nothing: A Season with the Arizona Cardinals.
The most prominently highlighted figure in the series was head coach Bruce Arians. The Amazon TV crew even went as far as following Arians and his wife to their vacation home in Georgia where the Arians stories flew like pigeons releasing from a cage. Arians talked, still very emotionally and indignantly about his unmerited departure from the Steelers. He talked about his long journey from being kicked out of high school and off the football team for drinking, to playing QB at Temple, to coaching as in assistant in Alabama under Bear Bryant, to returning to Temple as a young head coach, to burning out at Temple and to arriving in the NFL with the Chiefs in 1989 as running backs coach...etc., etc. etc.
We learned about Arians' swag, his now signature Kangol hats, his power naps in an oxygen vault, his penchant for drinking bourbon, his philosophy that coaches shouldn't have to work long hours and his love of boating on his lake.
There was much anticipation for the Cardinals in the 2106 season, especially for anyone who had watched All or Nothing. And yet, 2016 was a major disappointment due to Arians' own health scares, a number of the Cardinals' self-inflicted mistakes at key situations, and a staggering number of illnesses and injuries.
Arians was ill-tempered and surly throughout the dismal 2016 season. In reacting to poorly played and coached performances, Arians was quick to blame players, a lack of leadership from veterans and younger players, NFL schedule makers and referees.
By any standards, Arians' "no risk-it, no biscuit" coaching style is brash...a Bill Parcels' type of brash. Arians is everything he says he is...his mantra is to "coach em hard and hug them later." For the most part, Arians' style seems to sit well with the players. He has a way of bonding in kindred fashion with star-crossed players like Tyrann Mathieu who have had to fight off the painful throes of drug abuse and demoralizing season-ending injuries.
Arians also has forged a bond with the Cardinals' aging superstar Larry Fitzgerald, even though Fitzgerald has not favored Arians' role for him in Arians' offense. And it would appear that at least on the surface, Arians has maintained the loyalty of some of the players he has disparaged in the press, like tackle D.J. "Knee Deep" Humphries and cornerback Justin "failure in progress" Bethel.
And now...on the eve of Arians' 5th season as head coach in Arizona, he has released a book he co-wrote with author Lars Anderson titled: The Quarterback Whisperer: How to Build an Elite NFL Quarterback.
The timing of this book release raises some questions:
1. How much national and local attention does Arians feels he needs? Wasn't winning NFL Coach of the Year in 2012 and 2014 and starring in All or Nothing in 2016 enough, at least for a while?
2. How much of Arians' success in the NFL been the result of impeccable timing---having been an assistant coach in Indianapolis and Pittsburgh when the Colts and Steelers drafted rookies Peyton Manning, Ben Roethlisberger and Andrew Luck? Plus, what kind of a fortuitous break was it for Arians to take over for Chuck Pagano? The timing of that season not only saved Arians' career, it propelled him to his first head coaching job.
3. Does Arians have the temerity to suggest that he was one of the main reasons and the common denominator as to why Manning, Roethlisberger and Luck emerged as All-Pro caliber QBs?
4. Why did Arians choose to steal the moniker of "QB Whisperer" from his own assistant head coach, Tom Moore?
5. Does this book means that Arians is setting up 2017 as his swan song and the true All or Nothing season? Tyrann Mathieu in an interview from London today expressed his desire this season to send Arians off on a "high horse." Yet, shouldn't this season be more about trying to send sure-fire first ballot Hall of Fame WR Larry Fitzgerald off on a high horse?
6. It is sad and upsetting to learn in this book that Arians, a prostate cancer survivor, endured another cancer scare this year when he had a malignant tumor removed from one of his kidneys. Apparently, Arians knew this while he was going through his health problems late in the season. And apparently he shared his diagnosis with the Honey Badger and some of the players. But why wait until the book release to tell the Arizona fans and the NFL world?
7. What kind of QB whispering has Arians done for Carson Palmer? Sure, Palmer has put up some good numbers in Arizona and has gone 36-18-1 as a starter, but he has been turnover prone in some key games like the NFC Championship game and has not proven he can take a team all the way to the Super Bowl. His career playoffs record is 1-3 with a QB rating of 66.9, 56.8% completion percentage and a 5/7 TD/interception ratio. Compounding the matter, Palmer had to think long and hard this year about whether to return this season. Regardless, can anyone with a straight face call Carson Palmer "elite"?
8. The last questions are -- isn't there yet (hopefully) an unwritten chapter for this book? Isn't this the kind of book that is better to be released after one retires?
Whatever the answers, Bruce Arians seems to crave the attention...in fact, he seems to demand it.
Arians' journey to becoming an NFL head coach has already been well-chronicled. On the brink of retirement, having been let go by the Steelers as their long-time offensive coordinator, on his way to his and his wife's retirement home in Georgia, Arians received a last-ditch phone call from Colts' head coach Chuck Pagano and immediately turned his car around and headed to Indianapolis as the Colts' new play caller on offense.
When Pagano was diagnosed with leukemia early in the season, Arians took over as interim head coach and helped to guide the Colts and rookie QB Andrew Luck to a surprising 11-5 record and a playoff berth. Arians, all the while, kept a light for Pagano and handled his responsibilities with aplomb and humble deference to his long-time friend. Ironically, after Pagano returned, Arians was hospitalized on the eve of the playoffs and could only watch the Colts lose from his hospital bed.
Nevertheless, Arians was named the NFL's Coach of the Year in 2012 for his efforts with the Colts.
Quickly, Arians was hired by the Arizona Cardinals as the new head coach in 2013. His first season got off to a somewhat slow start, but his team finished strong and one game out of the playoffs at 10-6. In his second season, Arians' squad went 11-5 and earned a wild card berth before losing to the Panthers in the wild card round. For this effort and achievement, Arians was lauded once again as NFL Coach of the Year in 2014.
Perhaps his greatest coaching performance came in 2015 when the Cardinals dethroned the Seahawks as NFC West Champions and earned the NFC's #2 seed in the playoffs with a stellar 13-3 record. After an opening round bye, despite watching Aaron Rodgers throw a successful game-tying Hail Mary before a stunned crowd in Glendale, the Cardinals replied in overtime when a scrambling Carson Palmer found a wide open Larry Fitzgerald to the far side of the field and Fitzgerald weaved through Packer defenders all the way inside the Packers' 5 yard line, and then scored the game winning TD on a shovel pass.
In the 2015 NFC Championship game at Carolina, the Cardinals imploded. Palmer turned the ball over 7 times and Cam Newton picked apart the Cardinals' defense on the ground and through the air ti the tune of 476 yards and 5 TDs. It was a humiliating 49-15 defeat for Cardinals.
All the while in 2015, the Cardinals were being filmed on nearly a daily basis for an Amazon TV series called All or Nothing: A Season with the Arizona Cardinals.
The most prominently highlighted figure in the series was head coach Bruce Arians. The Amazon TV crew even went as far as following Arians and his wife to their vacation home in Georgia where the Arians stories flew like pigeons releasing from a cage. Arians talked, still very emotionally and indignantly about his unmerited departure from the Steelers. He talked about his long journey from being kicked out of high school and off the football team for drinking, to playing QB at Temple, to coaching as in assistant in Alabama under Bear Bryant, to returning to Temple as a young head coach, to burning out at Temple and to arriving in the NFL with the Chiefs in 1989 as running backs coach...etc., etc. etc.
We learned about Arians' swag, his now signature Kangol hats, his power naps in an oxygen vault, his penchant for drinking bourbon, his philosophy that coaches shouldn't have to work long hours and his love of boating on his lake.
There was much anticipation for the Cardinals in the 2106 season, especially for anyone who had watched All or Nothing. And yet, 2016 was a major disappointment due to Arians' own health scares, a number of the Cardinals' self-inflicted mistakes at key situations, and a staggering number of illnesses and injuries.
Arians was ill-tempered and surly throughout the dismal 2016 season. In reacting to poorly played and coached performances, Arians was quick to blame players, a lack of leadership from veterans and younger players, NFL schedule makers and referees.
By any standards, Arians' "no risk-it, no biscuit" coaching style is brash...a Bill Parcels' type of brash. Arians is everything he says he is...his mantra is to "coach em hard and hug them later." For the most part, Arians' style seems to sit well with the players. He has a way of bonding in kindred fashion with star-crossed players like Tyrann Mathieu who have had to fight off the painful throes of drug abuse and demoralizing season-ending injuries.
Arians also has forged a bond with the Cardinals' aging superstar Larry Fitzgerald, even though Fitzgerald has not favored Arians' role for him in Arians' offense. And it would appear that at least on the surface, Arians has maintained the loyalty of some of the players he has disparaged in the press, like tackle D.J. "Knee Deep" Humphries and cornerback Justin "failure in progress" Bethel.
And now...on the eve of Arians' 5th season as head coach in Arizona, he has released a book he co-wrote with author Lars Anderson titled: The Quarterback Whisperer: How to Build an Elite NFL Quarterback.
The timing of this book release raises some questions:
1. How much national and local attention does Arians feels he needs? Wasn't winning NFL Coach of the Year in 2012 and 2014 and starring in All or Nothing in 2016 enough, at least for a while?
2. How much of Arians' success in the NFL been the result of impeccable timing---having been an assistant coach in Indianapolis and Pittsburgh when the Colts and Steelers drafted rookies Peyton Manning, Ben Roethlisberger and Andrew Luck? Plus, what kind of a fortuitous break was it for Arians to take over for Chuck Pagano? The timing of that season not only saved Arians' career, it propelled him to his first head coaching job.
3. Does Arians have the temerity to suggest that he was one of the main reasons and the common denominator as to why Manning, Roethlisberger and Luck emerged as All-Pro caliber QBs?
4. Why did Arians choose to steal the moniker of "QB Whisperer" from his own assistant head coach, Tom Moore?
5. Does this book means that Arians is setting up 2017 as his swan song and the true All or Nothing season? Tyrann Mathieu in an interview from London today expressed his desire this season to send Arians off on a "high horse." Yet, shouldn't this season be more about trying to send sure-fire first ballot Hall of Fame WR Larry Fitzgerald off on a high horse?
6. It is sad and upsetting to learn in this book that Arians, a prostate cancer survivor, endured another cancer scare this year when he had a malignant tumor removed from one of his kidneys. Apparently, Arians knew this while he was going through his health problems late in the season. And apparently he shared his diagnosis with the Honey Badger and some of the players. But why wait until the book release to tell the Arizona fans and the NFL world?
7. What kind of QB whispering has Arians done for Carson Palmer? Sure, Palmer has put up some good numbers in Arizona and has gone 36-18-1 as a starter, but he has been turnover prone in some key games like the NFC Championship game and has not proven he can take a team all the way to the Super Bowl. His career playoffs record is 1-3 with a QB rating of 66.9, 56.8% completion percentage and a 5/7 TD/interception ratio. Compounding the matter, Palmer had to think long and hard this year about whether to return this season. Regardless, can anyone with a straight face call Carson Palmer "elite"?
8. The last questions are -- isn't there yet (hopefully) an unwritten chapter for this book? Isn't this the kind of book that is better to be released after one retires?
Whatever the answers, Bruce Arians seems to crave the attention...in fact, he seems to demand it.
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