Bruce Arians steps down as Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach; Todd Bowles picked to be successor

Add this to the craziest, newsiest NFL offseason in modern league history: Bruce Arians, who coached the Buccaneers to a Super Bowl LV victory less than 14 months ago, is stepping aside to take a front-office role with the team effective immediately.

Tampa Bay will install Arians’ preferred successor, defensive coordinator Todd Bowles, as the new head coach. Bowles, 58, previously coached the Jets to a 24-40 record in 2015-18, his only full-time head-coaching job. Bowles, who is Black, would become the sixth minority head coach in the league, joining Mike Tomlin (Pittsburgh), Ron Rivera (Washington), Robert Saleh (Jets), Mike McDaniel (Miami) and Lovie Smith (Houston).

Arians, 69, said his new job would be as “senior consultant for football,” and that gig will start with Tampa Bay’s 2022 draft prep.

The move comes as a surprise but perhaps not a shock. Arians, the most colorful coach in a buttoned-up pro game, said he started thinking about stepping aside at the NFL Scouting Combine a month ago. He is a prostate-cancer survivor and was hospitalized due to an illness late in his first head-coach tenure in Indianapolis in 2012. He’s suffering from a torn Achilles today. But when he explained his reasons, health wasn’t the big thing.

He said he’s relinquishing the Tampa job because “succession has always been huge for me. With the organization in probably the best shape it’s been in its history, with Tom Brady coming back … I’d rather see Todd in position to be successful and not have to take some [crappy] job. I’m probably retiring next year anyway, in February. So, I control the narrative right now. I don’t control it next February because [if] Brady gets hurt, we go 10-7, and it’s an open interview for the job … I got 31