Former Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Arizona Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians has announced he will be having open heart surgery.
The 73-year-old, who won a Super Bowl with Tom Brady in Tampa in 2021, did not explain why but revealed he will be having the procedure on February 6.
Arians was appearing on Today to promote a Super Bowl commercial with Brady’s former New England Patriots teammate Rob Gronkowski around prostate cancer screening.
Arians, a prostate cancer survivor, shares two children with wife Christine. He still works as a senior advisor to the Buccaneers’ general manager Jason Licht after a lengthy career in the NFL.
After spending 20 years working as an assistant or coordinator for various teams, as well as a spell as interim head coach for the Indianapolis Colts, Arians was finally given his first head coaching job in the NFL by the Cardinals in 2013.
In his five years in Arizona, Arians led the team to the NFC Championship game in 2015 but only made the playoffs twice. He stepped away following the 2017 season.
Former Buccaneers and Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians will be having open heart surgery
Arians won a Super Bowl in Tampa Bay with Tom Brady as his quarterback in 2021
He then returned to the sideline in 2019 with the Buccaneers and managed to secure the highly-coveted signature of Brady in 2020 following the seven-time Super Bowl winner’s acrimonious departure from the Patriots.
They had immediate success, going 11-5 in their first season together before beating Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl on their own field.
Arians coached one more season, going 13-4, but the reigning champions were eliminated from the playoffs by the Los Angeles Rams in the the divisional round.
In a 2023 interview, Arians blamed Brady’s in-season divorce from Gisele Bundchen and other distractions for the Buccaneers finishing 8-9 in the 2022 season under new coach Todd Bowles.
Brady came back to the Buccaneers in February 2022 just 40 days after announcing his first retirement, which was reported at the time to be the driving factor in his divorce from the Brazilian supermodel. Their divorce became final in October 2022.
‘The injuries to our leaders was really, really hard,’ said Arians, who held the role of senior consultant with the Buccaneers that season.
‘Tom wasn’t himself, you know, with all the things that were going on. And I got to give him all the credit in the world for battling through what he went through last year for his teammates.
‘I think the world of him but it wasn’t the real Tom Brady out there.’
