There’s an old saying about compromising your standards by associating with sketchy characters.
It goes like this:
If you sleep dogs then you wake up with fleas.
Tampa Bay Bucs coach Bruce Arians is scratching like a mangy mongrel mutt this week.
He has flea bites all over his body.
This is what you get when you sell your soul for a player like Antonio Brown.
Brown, as we all knew he would, ended up embarrassing Arians, Tom Brady and the entire Tampa Bay Bucs organization in one of the most bizarre incidents in NFL history on Sunday. In a mid-game meltdown, Brown refused to go into the game and then tore off his jersey and helmet, ran shirtless through the end zone and flashed a peace sign before exiting the stadium and quitting on his team.
Arians dismissed Brown from the team right after the game.
Of course, Brown should have never been on the team in the first place.
But, then again, Arians is really no different than any of the other win-at-all cost coaches spanning professional and college sports — except he doesn’t quite look or act the part. As it turns out, though, Arians is just a good-natured, grandfatherly, gray-bearded version of Urban Meyer or Bill Belichick.
Winning is a powerful intoxicant and Arians simply got commode-hugging drunk on it.
Arians, who will turn 70 later this year, has been a good NFL coach but had never been considered a great one until the Bucs were fortunate enough to land the great Brady before last season. Let’s not kid ourselves, Arians, in the twilight of his career, was willing to do whatever Brady wanted him to do to win that elusive Super Bowl. If Brady had wanted his new coach to underinflate footballs, Arians would have carried a deflation needle around in his pants pocket done the dirty deed himself.
If you’ll remember, Arians originally said before last season that there was no way the Bucs would ever sign Brown. It’s “not going to happen,” Arians insisted then because Brown is too much of a “diva” and is “not a fit in our locker room.”
Fast forward a few months later when the Bucs suffered some injuries at wide receiver. At Brady’s urging and with Brown actually moving in for a time with Brady and his family, the Bucs acquiesced and signed Brown who was coming off an eight-game NFL suspension for punching a delivery truck driver. There was one caveat regarding the Bucs signing Brown, Arians told NBC’s Peter King at the time: “He screws up one time, he’s gone.”
But then Brown helped the Bucs win the Super Bowl last season and the intoxicant of winning further inebriated Arians, whose zero-tolerance policy regarding Brown suddenly disappeared (some believe it ended up at the bottom of the Hillsborough River after Arians threw it overboard during the Bucs victory boat parade). Brown not only screwed up, he screwed up royally earlier this season and committed a federal crime in the process. When Brown was suspended for three games for duping the NFL and avoiding league COVID protocols by using a false vaccination card (a felony), Arians not only ignored the transgression; he became defiant.
When reminded of his zero-tolerance policy after the vaccination card fiasco and asked how he would respond to those who think he should cut Brown, Arians snapped: “I don’t give a s--- what they think. Only thing I care about is this football team and what’s best for us.”
Translation: Winning is all that matters.
Until Sunday when Brown committed the unpardonable sin of embarrassing the team by quitting on national television.
A question for Coach Arians: Why is quitting on national television any worse than some of Antonio Brown’s other transgressions.
Why is it worse than the burglary and battery charges?
Why is it worse than throwing heavy furniture off a 14th-floor balcony and nearly hitting a toddler?
Why is it worse than the sexual assault allegations?
Why is worse than the domestic violence allegation?
Why is it worse than sending intimidating text messages to a woman who had accused Brown of making unwanted sexual advances toward her?
Is quitting on the team really worse than bullying women and recklessly endangering a toddler’s life?
Have another drink, Coach Arians.
The intoxicating drink of winning.
And here’s hoping after your next precious victory, your players replace the celebratory Gatorade shower with a potent insecticide dip.
It’ll help get rid of all the fleas.
Email me at mbianchi@orlandosentinel.com . Hit me up on Twitter @BianchiWrites and listen to my Open Mike radio show every weekday from 6 to 9:30 a.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and HD 101.1-2
