Bruce Arians: There Must Be An Offseason Plan This Spring
March 30th, 2021
Bucs coach Bucco Bruce Arians.
Bucco Bruce Arians is just about fed up like a lot of us who want a return to normalcy. For Arians, that includes a normal NFL offseason.
This subject is nothing new for Arians, but he reiterated today in a Zoom conference call that for the sake of the game and for the development of young players, the NFL needs to have an offseason program ready to go this spring.
Young players, Arians said, have lost way too much developmental time.
“When you look at the first-, second- and now third-year players, they have missed all of their development time,” Arians said. “Last year — none for that group. So for the first-year player coming into their second year, had none.
“This year, we might draft a guy who opted out last year. So he’s way behind. So it is mandatory that we this [spring an] offseason for the young player development.”
Arians hinted if the NFLPA doesn’t want veterans participating in offseason drills, he’s OK with that. But it is the younger players that are being hurt by an absence of an organized offseason regimen that includes in-person OTAs and minicamps.
“For the veterans, it is voluntary anyway,” Arians said. “But for the young player development, it is huge. To see those guys, those first-, second-, third-year players make a next step forward — we need the spring but we also need the preseason.”
Later in the presser, Arians sort of relaxed his stance about preseason games, noting how valuable controlled scrimmages are with other teams.
Asked how he felt about a 17-game regular season, 3-game preseason schedule, Arians smiled and said, “You might as well embrace it because it is coming.”
March 30th, 2021 at 1:22 pm
Well, I get it. But he did pretty damn good without one last year. New QB. Three new RBs. New TE. Rookie RT.
And they all played at this the highest of levels.
March 30th, 2021 at 1:32 pm
There’s a certain brilliance to having the highest number of coaches. The Bucs can coach up the players with more 1:1s.
March 30th, 2021 at 1:41 pm
Hopefully we dont have a million hamstring injuries again.
March 30th, 2021 at 2:22 pm
Yeah Sly…you invest, on the average, well over a million on each player. So if a coach costs you a couple hundred grand more, for every couple players, to get them to a high performance level, seems almost a no brainer.
March 30th, 2021 at 3:27 pm
I’ve been a season ticket holder for 10 years and I’ve always hated having to pay for the stupid preseason games. Take them all away and make all count. If I’m paying regular-season prices, then those games should count.
March 30th, 2021 at 4:16 pm
I might be ok paying 1/2 price for one preseason game…. maybe
2 preseason, 2 bye weeks, 18 games.
March 30th, 2021 at 5:20 pm
Yeah, the NFL did have 2 bye weeks in the 90s, 1993 I believe, and I’m not sure why they went away from it. Going to a 17-week schedule, you’d think 2 bye weeks would be a natural — so you get 2 preseason games, 18 week schedule, 2 byes.
BUT, killing a preseason game and replacing it with a bye week reduces your ticket revenue. If they don’t go to the 18/2/2 schedule, this is why. Otherwise I love the idea of 2 bye weeks, with the awesome NFL Redzone, watching that on weeks when the Bucs aren’t playing (or they’re playing in prime time) is really entertaining. It’s much better than in 1993 when you’d have, at best, 2 games to pick from, and generally just one on at a time.
March 30th, 2021 at 9:42 pm
The owners would commit mass suicide before giving up a preseason game. Hell, if they could they’d have a 30 game season with cyborgs from the future whom all have german accents. Bunch of spaulding smails. If you can’t tell, I’m not a fan of owners
March 31st, 2021 at 10:08 am
18 games, 2bye weeks. Thats a long ass season.