With Tom Brady in Tampa Bay, there was speculation that Antonio Brown would follow him.
Well, Bruce Arians shot that speculation down on CBS Sports Radio.
“Yeah, it’s not going to happen,” Arians said on Tiki & Tierney. “It’s just not going to happen. There’s no room. There’s probably not enough money, but it’s just not going to happen. It’s not a fit here.”
Brady enjoyed playing with Brown, albeit briefly, in New England, but Arians coached AB in Pittsburgh. Even if Brown offered to play for the veteran minimum, Arians would turn him away.
“No,” he said. “I just know him, and it’s not a fit in our locker room.”
Brady, of course, is. He joins the Buccaneers after 20 seasons and six Super Bowl titles with the Patriots.
“I never thought that he would actually leave New England,” Arians said. “And then as it drug out, you say, ‘Maybe there’s a chance, so we better do our due diligence, look at all the film, grade all the quarterbacks’ – which we were going to do anyway. As it got closer to free agency, there was no way he was signing – or they would have already done it. So we were waiting, hoping that we had checked all the boxes, and had a chance. . . . I think he had a pretty strong feeling about us. It was just basically a long conversation. Everything he was looking for, we had. It was a quick decision.”
Brady replaces Jameis Winston, who last year led the NFL in passing yards, as the Buccaneers finished third in the league in scoring offense (28.6 points per game).
Brady likely won’t lead the league in passing yards in 2020, but the offense still figures to be potent. An Arians offense usually is.
“I’ve always given my quarterbacks a lot of leeway and collaborate with them on playbooks, game plans,” Arians said. “They pick all the plays they want to throw in a ball game. They throw out the plays they don’t want in the game plan. So that part’s not going to change. I think for Tom, he’s a bright, bright guy, and it’s a lot easier for him to learn our verbiage than for 21 average learners to learn his. So he’s all in on that part.”