Could Bruce Arians return to coaching?

Arians last coached with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2021 before stepping away from the sideline and moving into a front-office consulting role with the franchise. He dealt with several health issues toward the end of his coaching tenure, though he said at the time that they were not the reason for his decision.

Now healthy again, the longtime head coach is hinting that a return to the sideline could be on his mind.

Bruce Arians Has ‘Itch’ To Coach In the NFL Again

Arians coached football for 46 years before he stepped away after the 2021 NFL season. His coaching journey began as a graduate assistant at Virginia Tech in 1975, when he was 23.

Arians spent his first 14 seasons coaching in college before joining the Kansas City Chiefs as running backs coach in 1989. He went back and forth between the NFL and college for the next eight years before landing the Indianapolis Colts’ quarterback coach role and staying in the NFL permanently.

The veteran earned his first full-time NFL head-coaching opportunity with the Arizona Cardinals in 2013 after serving as the Colts’ interim head coach in 2012.

Arians led the Cardinals to three straight 10-plus-win seasons in his first three years and was hired by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2019.

In his second season in Tampa Bay, Arians and Tom Brady won a Super Bowl for the franchise.

The head coach led the Buccaneers to the No. 6 offense in the NFL in 2020, according to PFN’s Offense Impact Metric, and had the best unit in the league in 2021.

Now, five years after stepping away from the game, Arians says he’s got an “itch” to get back in it.

“Now that I’m all healthy again, I got that itch again. So we’ll see,” Arians told NFL insider Jordan Schultz. “I’ve always missed the players. You miss the players in the locker room. I damn sure don’t miss the refs, and I’m sure they don’t miss me.

“This is the first time I’m not a consultant anymore. Going to some high school games, my son started coaching out in Arizona, and just talking to him every day about ball. Going to talk to their coaches in the spring, talking to the team, and just another fire got lit.”

Arians said he started thinking about it all in mid-September, that before then, he had zero thoughts of making an NFL comeback.

However, the Super Bowl-winning coach was going through a lot during his final season with the Buccaneers, so feeling healthy again can make a big difference.

“I had torn my Achilles early in that season, and I was wearing these prosthetic high heels, and it threw my back out,” Arians said. “I couldn’t stand on the sideline for four hours anymore without a lot of pain. And I was also monitoring an aneurysm on my heart, and so I had some health issues.”

Arians had plenty of success during his coaching tenure in the NFL, and it would be no surprise if he has a strong market if he ultimately decides to try to make a comeback. He did add that he has not been in contact with any teams yet.

Fox Sports’ Greg Auman added that Arians is free and clear of his contract with Tampa Bay, so a new team could hire him without having to owe the Buccaneers any compensation.