Tag: O.J. Howard

In the end, it came down to fit, weapons, location, championship opportunity, and the need for the greatest quarterback in NFL history to try something new. The Tuesday afternoon news that Tom Brady has agreed in principle to a deal with the Buccaneers that will pay him approximately $30 million per year really isn’t about the money. Brady has earned over $230 million in his career. He’s got six Super Bowl rings. His legacy is cast in whatever particular substance you’d like to name. He has nothing left to prove, except for the notion that he can do what he’s done outside of the parameters of his relationship with Bill Belichick, the greatest coach in NFL history.

Most of all, it is about working with another head coach that will challenge him, and who is willing to be challenged, and that’s where Bucs head coach Bruce Arians comes in. In November, 2015, I wrote a piece for Sports Illustrated featuring Arians, then the head coach of the Arizona Cardinals, and I walked away from that work more impressed with Arians’ flexibility than his play-calling acumen. Carson Palmer was Arians’ quarterback in those days, and at his best, Palmer wasn’t dissimilar to Brady — a classicist pocket passer with a great feel for the game, the intelligence to grasp any playbook, and enough sand in his pants to call out any coach who was full of it.

Palmer loved Arians, and it came through not only in what he said, but his voice. Palmer had more respect for Arians’ play design than any other coach he’d ever worked with.

“It wasn’t the game plan, it was his timing,” Palmer told me. “He was just on point with his calls. It’s the same game plan we’ve had. I was speaking more of just when he was calling certain things. When he was calling screens, we were gashing them. When he was calling [deep] shots, the shots were there. The run-game calls were spot on. It was just kind of one of those days where he was just really in a good zone. And he was in it in the first half too, we just weren’t executing on it. We had some turnovers that cost us on some drives. But he just really seemed to have a really good feel. As players have really good games and they’re kind of in the zone, that same can be said for coaches. And I think BA was definitely in a groove there.”

In 2014, Palmer tore his ACL and missed all but six games. Backup Drew Stanton was thrown into the fire and started eight games. Ryan Londley started two games. Somehow, the Cardinals went 11-5 and made the playoffs. Stanton, who had worked with Arians when Arians was the offensive coordinator and interim head coach in Indianapolis told me that throughout his career, Arians had always given him faith in his own abilities.

“Early on, and I think if you ask any player, regardless of position, confidence is the hardest thing to hold onto and the easiest thing to lose,” Stanton told me in 2014. “You start questioning and doubting yourself, especially when people try and tell you that you can’t do things. But he’s done a great job of re-instilling that in me, and that started in Indianapolis. He gave me the ability and freedom to do stuff, even though I was a backup. He listened to my input and made me feel that I had a voice, even when I wasn’t on the field. So now, when I get on the field, I feel very comfortable with what’s going on, the mechanics of things. He’ll chime in on certain throws—get my shoulder down, do this, do that. Having played the position too, I think he understands the cerebral part of that.  He can relate to quarterbacks and help them to feel relaxed and confident.”

Why is this important? It’s important because of the automatic assumption that Brady, whose deep arm has fallen off over the last few seasons, will not fit in an Arians offense when Arians allegedly wants to do nothing but have his quarterback hurl the ball downfield. In truth, Arians has always operated with a Sid Gillman-esque system in which receivers run levels to all areas of the field to the quarterback’s front side, and easy escape routes to the back side. In other words, it’s more complicated than a bunch of verts downfield.

“Yeah, I mean, it’s not just everybody run a go [route],” Palmer confirmed. “There’s always player control and something underneath the route for every coverage possible. So it’s not just hey, let’s just take a big, long seven-step drop and everybody run a go. There’s always ways to check the ball down and get the ball out of your hands quick, and make a defense turn and recover to the ball.”

Perhaps most importantly when you consider Brady’s brilliance and experience is the fact that Arians has always made his quarterbacks a major part of the schematic and play-calling equation. If his quarterbacks don’t like the plan, the plan isn’t going to happen.

“I think the one thing we always have done with all our quarterbacks is they’ve really called the game,” Arians told me then regarding Palmer. “Friday, we’ll sit down and pick out his 15–20 favorite first-and-10 plays. Saturday night before the game, we’ll sit down and go through the entire third down package and let him pick the plays, the ones he’s most comfortable with. I can call what I think is the greatest play, but if he’s not comfortable with it, it’s probably not going to work. My job is to talk him into running those once he sees the picture on the sideline. He’s a veteran guy who works extremely hard, and you just, as a coach, try to put him into a position to be comfortable and successful.”

There’s also the concern that Arians’ love for the deep ball and seven-step drops required to throw those deep balls will put Brady in peril. But in 2019, per Pro Football Focus, Bucs quarterback Jameis Winston had 2.5 seconds or less in the pocket on 48% of his dropbacks, the 11th-most in the league. Shorter time in the pocket often means shorter drops, and shorter throws. While Winston did lead the league with 99 attempts on passes of 20 or mroe air yards, he also led the league in total passing attempts with 705 dropbacks. Winston’s deep-throw rate of 15.8% ranked fourth-highest in the NFL, while Brady’s deep-throw rate of 10.1% ranked 21st.

But was 2019 an outlier for Brady in that regard? Brady had a deep ball rate of 11.1% in 2018, 14.3% in 2017, 12.2% in 2016, and so on. If you normalize those rates over time, it’s not like Brady was never throwing it downfield. Last season, with very few receivers who could gain separation under any circumstances, Brady still completed 26 of 67 deep attempts for 749 yards, seven touchdowns, three interceptions, and a passer rating of 97.2. Julian Edelman led New England’s receivers with six deep receptions on 14 targets for 161 yards, and two touchdowns. Phillip Dorsett finished second with five deep catches for 192 yards and three touchdowns.

Now, we get around to the targets Brady will have in Tampa, and this is as good a reason as all the others that this deal could mark a career resurgence. Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, and Breshad Perriman combined last season for 30 deep receptions for 1,040 yards and right touchdowns. Add in tight ends Cameron Brate and O.J. Howard — and we know how well Brady has worked with two-tight end sets from his days with Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez — and we’re looking at an entirely different environment. Evans is the best contested-catch receiver Brady has had since Gronkowski’s salad days, and you could argue that Perriman, the third wheel in the receiver corps, was even more effective in that role in the last month of the 2019 season.

Is Brady what he was 10 years ago? Obviously not, but it could also be said that the Patriots’ receiver corps in 2019 was as weak as anything Brady had ever dealt with in his entire career. And there is absolutely no way Arians is going to bring Brady into the building without an absolutely clear idea what his new quarterback can and can’t do.

Arians has said that his style is to coach his players hard and hug ’em harder, and that applies to his quarterbacks more than anybody else. No other position gets more scrutiny from Arians, and given Brady’s history with Bill Belichick, who for years made an object example of Brady by pointing out his mistakes in team meetings — gosh, the other players would think, if he’ll yell at Brady, I’d really better watch out — Brady should have no problem with that. If he respects the messenger, he’ll take the message, no matter what it is. Brady would absolutely vaporize a weak head coach. He would never willingly sign with a team that had one.

“Obviously, being around him for three years and just hearing his input on certain plays and certain coverages,” Palmer told me about Arians back then. “A scheme comes up and we’re working on a scheme and he might change his mind, and he’ll give you a reason why. He doesn’t just change a certain route within a scheme or put something new in, there’s always a reason behind it. So he’s always giving you insight. He’s brilliant offensively. He’s as bright an offensive mind as I’ve been around. So just having a chance to be around that type of guy just enlightens you on tons of things that you don’t know about. Being in year 13, there’s a lot I don’t know. I still am always trying to learn, and being around a guy like him just accelerates the process. I’ve just learned a ton about football. A ton about offense, and a ton about protections, and coverages, and really just everything through him.”

Now, in year 20, Brady will get that same opportunity — to both learn from, and teach, an offensive genius he’s never worked with before. Add in the graphic improvement in receiver quality, a defense that should allow balance on offense — last season, the Bucs saw their defense move from dead last in Football Outsiders’ opponent-adjusted efficiency metrics in 2018 to fifth in 2019 — and Brady’s own well-known desire to prove every single doubter wrong, and this could be the perfect formula for Tom Brady to tear the league up as he hasn’t done in years.

Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar previously covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”