Rookie WR Jaelon Darden

Bucs Super Bowl-winning coach Bucco Bruce Arians can be an old school, hard-arse coach when he wants to be. That stands to reason since he once worked for the ultimate hardarse coach, Bear Bryant.

While deep down Arians is a player’s coach, those players have to earn his respect, and that’s with hard work and attention to detail. For players who meet Arians’ standards, he’ll do darn near anything for them.

It’s common to hear Arians harshly chew out a player with very colorful language for a mental mistake in practice. That voice is distinct. Just yesterday Joe heard Arians holler at someone, “Hold on to the f’ing ball!”

Early in training camp rookie receiver Jaelon Darden was getting a lot of reps and a lot of targets and even got snaps in with the first team. However, on a particular play, Darden apparently didn’t follow Arians’ specific orders and Mount Arians erupted.

“Jaelon, what the f’ did I just tell you to do?” Arians boomed in a voice that likely could have been heard from Jesuit High School.

Darden was asked yesterday how he’s handling Arians’ sometimes tough-as-nails love.

Darden almost blew off the question with a snicker. Why? His mom, Tamishe Darden, has been that way for years. In fact, it almost sounded from Darden as if his mom is a bit more feisty than Arians.

“My mom’s like that so I have been dealing with that for a long time,” Darden said with a smile. “If anything it just motivates me to go harder. Seeing somebody that wants me to be great, definitely pushes you to be great. That is definitely what I need. I love hard coaching.

“Man, Mom is like that 24/7 (laughs). She is like that with football and everything. If I have a bad game, I’m not going to stop hearing about it until I get home. Probably when I get in bed, that’s when it will stop.”

One example of Darden’s mother’s high standards. He once had a little league football game where he tore up his opponent. Still, despite having a game most kids dream of, even parents dream of, Darden’s mom wasn’t satisfied.

“In Little League, I fumbled the ball but I ended up with five touchdowns,” Darden said. All his mom remembered, however, was that fumble. And in her eyes, he had a bad game because of that fumble.

“She was tripping,” Darden said.

And as Darden suggested, it wasn’t just football where his mother had exacting demands. Including making his bed.

“Man, she used to go crazy in the mornings,” Darden said. “I used to try to get up out of there and she’d like, ‘Nah, come back.’ Right before I walked out of the house.”

So Darden would have to march back to his bedroom and make sure the bed was made exactly the way his mom expected to pass the next inspection.

So while some players may look up to Arians as a father figure the way he embraces and supports them, with Darden, it seems as if Arians may be more of a mother hen.

Because if Arians didn’t holler at Darden for slipups, his mom sure would. And will.