Bucs win belongs as much to Bowles as Brady

By Art Spander

Tom Brady was the MVP, of course, because the prediction was that Super Bowl LV either was going to belong to him or the shell-shocked kid on the other side, Patrick Mahomes. And yes, Brady is the greatest ever.

But this one, this mismatch, no less belongs to Todd Bowles as it does to Brady.

Bowles is the Tampa Bay Bucs’ defensive coordinator, the guy who designed the formations and called the plays that for the first time in the season of 2020, really the the first time in the career for young Mr. Mahomes, left him virtually helpless and hopeless.
 Never in his brief career had Mahomes, harassed, chased, and sacked, been unable to create a single touchdown.

Tampa Bay limited K.C. to three field goals in its overwhelming 31-9 victory.

Brady will get the attention, and unquestionably he deserves it, quarterback on the winning Super Bowl team for a record seventh time, having wisely joined the Bucs last spring as a free agent after 20 years with the New England Patriots.

Brady threw three touchdown passes, two to his once and current teammate, tight end Rob Gronkowski. Offense glows, but as we’ve been told, defense wins.

“Todd Bowles, Todd Bowles,” Devin White, the Bucs linebacker, said to CBS-TV. “He did it.”

Bowles once was head coach of the New York Jets, and there was a report before the kickoff of the Super Bowl that if the Bucs won, Bruce Arians would retire as Tampa Bay head coach and Bowles would replace him.

Arians denied as much after the game, for now at least, saying, “This is fun. This is what I wanted.”

For a long while. At 68, Arians is the oldest coach in the NFL. And now, certainly, the most elated.

Particularly since his Bucs not only won, but since the game was played at Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium, where because of the pandemic there were more cardboard cutouts than live fans, also won the first Super Bowl held in a home stadium.

Kansas City was the defending champion and a narrow favorite (3 points). But after taking a 3-0 lead, the Chiefs were barely in the game. They struggled with a patch-up offensive line, true, but in truth they struggled with the Bucs’ relentless pursuit

There were reminders of Super Bowl 50 at Levi’s Stadium, when the Denver Broncos, underdogs, stopped a brilliant Carolina Panthers offense and Cam Newton.

Somehow these defensive coaches, with a two-week window between the conference championships and the Super Bowl, figure out how to unnerve the big boys — like Mahomes.

“Our timing was not there,” said Mahomes, who was 26 of 49 for 243 yards. He was sacked three times and intercepted twice.

Their timing wasn’t there because invariably someone from the Bucs — White, Antoine Winfield — was there, in their face. Mahomes, known for his scrambling, could not escape. Tampa defenders went wide, Mahomes not knowing which way to go.

“Give them credit,” said Mahomes about the Bucs.

So we will, as we give Brady credit, a 43-year-old who seems destined to play until he’s 53. The Serra High (San Mateo) grad is the essence of confidence and reliability. Wisdom and guile, goes the aphorism, make up for age and immobility.

Arians knew last spring he needed a quarterback, and when the Patriots decided for one reason or another not to bring back Brady, the Bucs had one. And now, after languishing since winning the 2003 Super Bowl, they have another title.

Tom indeed is one of a kind, and brought to the same franchise where Todd Bowles put together the defense, it’s a perfect union.

One knows the way to get points, the other the way to keep from getting them.

A super matchup of quarterbacks in the Super Bowl

By Art Spander

It’s about the quarterback. Isn’t it always? It’s about Joe Montana or Terry Bradshaw or John Elway. Or Sunday in Super Bowl LV, Tom Brady or Patrick Mahomes.

Decision maker. Play caller. Man in bubble. Man under pressure.

Brady, 43, arguably the best ever; Mahomes, 25, arguably the best now.

Such a disparity in ages. Such a similarity in production.

So much is made of quarterbacks, yet it never can be too much. Montana was the reason the 49ers became champs. Bradshaw was the Steelers’ anchor, Elway the force on the Broncos.

There’s never been a great team without a great quarterback. Defense may dominate — it won Super Bowl 50 for the Broncos. The other team will have the ball.

But what you do when you have the ball? That’s where the quarterback makes the difference. As Brady completing 43 of 62 attempts in New England’s comeback win over Atlanta in Super Bowl LI made a difference. As Mahomes completing passes to lead K.C. from behind in the fourth quarter to beat the 49ers in Super Bowl LIV made a difference.

Now with possibly the best Super Bowl quarterback matchup of all time, Brady of Tampa Bay vs. Mahomes of Kansas City — yes, Montana vs. Dan Marino in XIX is up there — the question is who will be the difference maker?

Mahomes has the arm, as well as the legs. He’s stronger, longer and, when needing to escape or run the ball, faster. Brady, in his 10th Super Bowl, is wiser.

Mahomes was MVP of last year’s Super Bowl in Miami. Brady has been MVP of multiple Super Bowls — his team, the New England Patriots, winner in six of them.

The Chiefs liked what was available. Mahomes lasted until the 10th pick of the 2017 draft (the Bears took QB Mitch Trubisky with the second overall pick).

The Bucs knew what they needed in the spring of 2020, a free agent quarterback. “Of course it was Tom Brady,” said coach Bruce Arians, “not thinking he would become a free agent.”

Brady became one, after 20 years with New England, and Arians reacted. “That’s how you live life,” Arians explained. “Do you sit and live in a closet and try to be safe, or do you go have some fun?”

The answer is written not on the wind but in the wins.

“I looked at the whole situation,” Brady said after signing with Tampa Bay. “There were a lot of reasons to come here.” Not the least of which was a two-year, $50 million contract.

Mahomes in July signed a 10-year $500 million contract, which, if it goes to completion and he stays healthy and interested, would make him a free agent at 35.  Presumably Brady will be retired by then, but one never knows.

What we do know, not surprisingly, is that both Mahomes and Brady seem as impressed with the style and results of each other as the performances would indicate.

“You’re crazy,” said Mahomes, “if you don’t look up to Tom Brady as a young athlete. He’s the type of greatness you strive to be. It’s going to be a great opportunity for me to get to play against Tom, an all-time great, the GOAT (greatest of all time), everything like that.”

Brady, a sixth-round pick in 2000, surely looks at Mahomes and pictures himself. The way it was, the way it is and maybe the way it will be.

Said Brady of Mahomes, “I think he’s got the ability to focus when the moments are the biggest. That’s probably the mark of any great athlete, coming through in the clutch. I think he’s off to a great start in his career doing that.”

The chance for Mahomes to continue comes in a Super Bowl against Brady. What a matchup. It’s always the quarterback.

Goodell on Brady (the greatest) and Kaepernick (unrecognized)

By Art Spander

He is the son of a politician, a U.S. Senator from New York. No surprise that Roger Goodell can maneuver so well through the tough times — and yes, the most important sporting league in America has them — and the difficult questions.

He is 61. NFL commissioner for some 14 years, paid enormously ($40 million annually) and, when needed, able to slip past the criticism and doubt like a great running back through would-be tacklers.

This is Goodell’s week, the annual week for the Super Bowl, “America’s Great Time Out,” it’s been labeled. And Goodell, as did his recent predecessors, the late Pete Rozelle and John Tagliabue, gets his glory and his grief, the latter when he addresses and responds to the media.

Rozelle, eagerly — hey, he helped create the Super Bowl back in 1966 — and Tagliabue, reluctantly, held their sessions on the Friday before the game. A couple years back, Goodell switched it to Thursday.

He was well prepared this Thursday. He’s always well prepared.

A one-time prep football star in suburban New York — Goodell’s career at Washington & Jefferson College was ruined by an injury — he pays attention both to game plans and possibilities.

Very little catches him off guard, whether it’s the understandably repetitive queries about the lack of African American coaches for a league in which 70 percent of the players are black; or the somewhat oddball query whether Tampa, host for this Sunday’s Super Bowl LV, will get the game in a “normal,” year, not haunted by the pandemic, when fans again will be permitted.   

"I don't know when normal will occur again," Goodell confided.

Nor, he could have added, does anyone else.

The new normal, if that’s the proper label, is to have as many media on Zoom calls as are in the room. Yes, journalists from some locations were there in flesh and blood. But so were journalists from as far away from Florida as Great Britain, via video conferencing.

Each constituency had its own requests, whether about Goodell’s relationship with Tom Brady, for whom the commissioner’s 2015 suspension for “Deflategate” was overruled, or what thoughts he had on Super Bowl LVI at the $5 billion SoFi Stadium in L.A., which opened last fall and where there hasn’t yet been a game with spectators.

“Tom Brady has shown himself to be probably the greatest player ever to play the game,” said Goodell about the 43-year-old quarterback who will start for Tampa Bay in his 10th Super Bowl game.

“His leadership, his ability to rise to the big occasion,” Goodell continued, “to make everybody around him rise ... and he’s one the great guys. I’ve known him for about 15 years. I think he’s going to continue to be a great player. I’m glad he’s going to play a few more years.”

Ben Volin of the Boston Globe — remember, for 20 years Brady was with New England — wanted to know whether Goodell punishing Brady back in 2015 was “the right thing to do.” That never was answered directly.

Goodell was more candid about Colin Kaepernick, who after leading the 49ers to Super Bowl XLVII in February 2013 was ostracized because a few years later he knelt during the National Anthem to protest racism.

Urged by then-President Donald Trump, team owners refused to sign Kaepernick as a free agent. In 2016 Goodell actively advised teams to bring in Kaepernick, but none did.

“We wished we had listened to our players two years ago,” said Goodell, which was as contrite as someone in his position could be.

“I said very clearly back in June (2020) that he deserves recognition. We started working with the players’ union and Black Lives Matter. He and other players brought the issues to us. We are now working with them.”

Too late to save Kaepernick’s career, but in time to help others. Goodell is nothing if not attentive.

Bucs’ Antonio Brown: From troubles to a place in the Super Bowl

By Art Spander

It’s all about production in sports.

There are exceptions, individuals or organizations with a genuine concern about civility and morality. Yet the issue rarely is what the athlete has done away from the field — his troubles in society — but what he is able to do on the field.

There was a wonderfully skilled receiver on the Oakland Raiders in the late 1960s, Warren Wells, who could catch anything. Unfortunately the law caught up with him, and he was arrested just before a huge game in Oakland.

For Raiders owner Al Davis — “Just win, baby” — the problem was less why Wells had been jailed than it was getting him back in the lineup for that Sunday.

It is ironic that receiver Antonio Brown, scheduled to play for Tampa Bay in Super Bowl LV on Sunday, once was also with the Raiders, if very briefly, a few days in the summer of 2019.

Then he was with New England. Then he was suspended eight weeks for multiple violations of the NFL’s personal conduct policy (burglary and sexual misconduct).

Then in October 2020, partly on the recommendation of Tom Brady, who for a few days was a teammate on the Patriots, Brown was signed by the Buccaneers and now is to play in the most important game of the year.

Hey, it never hurts a quarterback to have another guy who can run routes. Besides, as you’ve heard before, everyone deserves a second chance. Or for Brown is it a third or fourth one?

Brown was great with the Steelers for several years. He was unable to reach an agreement for a new contract, and everything turned nasty, not the least of which was Brown’s disposition.

Which didn’t affect the way Brady judged him.

“Certainly I’m happy for Antonio to get an opportunity to resume his career,” Brady said in a Westwood One radio interview, Oct. 26, 2020, when Brown joined the quarterback on the Bucs. “He’s put a lot of time and energy into working on a lot of things in his life.”

Including the restraints placed on him by the NFL. Brown is on probation for two years, must undergo a psychological evaluation, provide 100 hours of community service and attend an anger management course.

In a Super Bowl interview session via Zoom on Wednesday, Brown was asked about the legal woes, which also included being sued for hurling furniture off a 14th-floor balcony and nearly striking a 22-month-old and grandfather walking below. His answer was really no answer at all.

“I’m just extremely grateful to be here,” said Brown, evoking memories of Marshawn Lynch (“I’m only here so I won’t get fined”) before Super Bowl XLIX in 2015.

Lynch was repetitive, offering the line repeatedly for five minutes. Brown was evasive.

“It’s a blessing to be here,” said Brown. “Super grateful. I’d be doing a disservice if I talked about things that are not the focus of the game.”

Sort of a variation on a theme by Brady’s former boss at New England, Bill Belichick, who following a rare loss talked only about the next game on the Patriots’ schedule. “On to Cincinnati,” was the memorable Belichick observation.

For Brown, it’s on to a world where the points on the scoreboard are almost all that matters, to him and those around him.

“I’ve been through some things, but that’s life,” Brown said. “We all have a story. We all have to allow ourselves to grow for the betterment of ourselves. I’m just grateful for the journey.

“I want my legacy to be a guy that was persistent, a guy that never gave up, no matter the odds, no matter the hate.”

Persistence counts. Production counts more. As we were reminded by the treatment of Warren Wells. And Antonio Brown.

Andy Reid: No Geritol or yelling, just wins

By Art Spander

Of course they’re older — with one exception, Sean McVay. The reason these guys are coaches is they have gained experience, in football or life. As you’ve heard, age is only a number, an insignificant one when compared to another number, wins.

How the conversation reached the point is hard to say, but apparently in his Tuesday presser, Zoomed for players and media separated by pandemic protocol, Kansas City’s Andy Reid was asked his age, an implication that he didn’t know how to deal with a new generation.

Reid is a mere 62 — the other coach in Sunday’s Super Bowl LV, Tampa Bay’s Bruce Arians, is 65 — and he joked that he and his staff are “no Geritol crew.”

If the reference is dated — Geritol was a mineral supplement pulled off the market maybe 30 years ago when the FDA denied the claim it cured “tired blood” — Reid is not dated.

As his 25-year-old quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, pointed out, Reid is young enough.

Reid also is part of the renowned Bill Walsh coaching tree, men who as assistants were fortunate enough to have a connection with the individual who perfected the West Coast Offense and, in turn, helped the 49ers win five Super Bowls.

Each became an NFL head coach, and now four, George Seifert, Jon Gruden, Mike Holmgren and last year Reid had their own Super Bowl victories.

West Coast (capitals) and for Seifert, Holmgren and Reid, California guys, west coast, lower case.

Reid grew up in Los Angeles, not far from Griffith Park. There was a fine story by Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times the other day of Reid, your typical offensive lineman, and his pals from Marshall High cramming into a VW bug and hitting the town — but not until they made their hits in prep games.

Reid moved on to Brigham Young, where in 1988, after six years as Niners quarterback coach, Holmgren had become the Cougars’ offensive coordinator. When Holmgren took over as head coach of the Green Bay Packers, he brought in his group.

The tree bloomed once more. According to the Kansas City Chiefs’ web site, in 1992 the Packers, under Holmgren, had five future NFL head coaches on the staff: Reid, Gruden, Steve Mariucci, Dick Jauron and Ray Rhodes.

They were sharp and aggressive, and intent on reaching the sky.

Just as years earlier, in the 1960s, were Walsh, Dick Vermeil and Jim Mora Sr., on staff at Stanford. They would stay after practice drawing plays on what then was a blackboard, trying to outfox each other. ”Last man with the chalk wins,” was the observation.

Which sounds very much like what you’d hear about Holmgren’s Packers assistants. “It was an exciting group of young talented coaches,” Gruden told the Chiefs web site.

“I love football and had a lot to prove. Andy (Reid) also had a lot of love for the game and a lot to prove, too. It was all so exciting being in the NFL at a young age, being with Mike Holmgren and a having a chance to show we belonged.”

As Walsh, Vermeil and Mora did some 40 years earlier, Reid and his colleagues challenged each other with concepts and plays, “intrasquad” stuff you might call it, ideas that in time would become functional.

“In our staff meetings,” said Holmgren, “you could throw out ideas on a table and if it was a good idea I’d stick it in the game plan. What I didn’t realize is they kept track of that. They’d go back and give a hard time to each other about that.”

It was all in the learning, the experience, as was the Philadelphia defeat when Reid was the Eagles’ head coach in the 2005 Super Bowl. A hard time? That’s all they ever give losers in Philly.

But he went to the Chiefs in 2013, and the Chiefs got their first Super Bowl win in a half century. He has the goods. He’s always had the perspective.

“We all want to be treated a certain way. If not, I know how I like to be treated,” he said. “That’s (what) tells me what I need to do to get better at what I’m trying to get accomplished. You don’t necessarily have to yell and scream at me to get me to do something better. I kind of go about it that way, going to treat people the way I want to be treated.

“We’re here as teachers, and that’s what I do. That’s how I look at myself is a teacher — of, in my case, men. Whether it’s on the field or off the field, if I can give them any experience to become better players, husbands, fathers, that’s what I do.”

He’s done it beautifully — and successfully.