Tom Brady owes his 7th Super Bowl win to the brilliant work of Tampa Bay's coordinators
The Chiefs got thoroughly out-coached.
The Buccaneers were not supposed to have the coaching advantage in Super Bowl LV.
We spent all week gushing about Andy Reid’s and Eric Bieniemy’s brilliantly designed offense and Steve Spagnuolo’s dynamic defense. But it was their counterparts, Bruce Arians, Byron Leftwich and Todd Bowles who shined on the NFL’s biggest stage in a 31-9 win for Tampa Bay.
It was a dominant display from start to finish. The Buccaneers offense moved the ball at will. The defense did something that no other defense has done: Hold a Patrick Mahomes-led team to single digits. It was easily the worst performance of his young career.
We’ll have to wait for the all-22 to drop to fully understand how brilliant of a defensive plan Bowles put together for Tampa Bay’s Super Bowl triumph. But from what I could see on the broadcast view, it appeared the Buccaneers lived in two-high coverages with their safeties working in tandem with the cornerbacks to bracket the most dangerous threats.
It’s not a ground-breaking strategy — every team plays Kansas City’s offense like this — but the execution appeared to be flawless.
And the performance of the secondary, which of course was made easier by a ferocious pass rush (against an out-manned Chiefs line), was made more impressive by the fact that … the Bucs defense typically doesn’t play this way. At least they hadn’t for most of the season. But Bowles adjusted his approach following Tampa Bay’s loss to the Chiefs in Week 12.
Making such a drastic change to your scheme in the heat of a playoff run and pulling it off is coaching witchcraft.
Bowles deserves all the praise he’ll get after this one, but Leftwich should be celebrated as well. He heard a lot of criticism this season, especially when things weren’t going well around the middle of the season.
The Bucs weren’t calling enough play-action! They weren’t using enough motion! They were making things too hard on Tom Brady!
Well, Leftwich eventually figured it out. Yes, he had plenty of talent to work with. But he maximized his talent, which is so much harder to do when you have such a deep stable of weapons. No player was wasted.
He did that while brilliantly blending Arians’ vertical offense with the stuff Brady was doing in New England for the last two decades, which isn’t the easiest feat to pull off given how different those two schemes are.
And it didn’t just work. It dominated the league over the last two months or so.
The Bucs team we saw get run off the field in New Orleans back in Week 1 looked nothing like the team we saw dominate the Chiefs for 60 minutes on Sunday. On either side of the ball. That’s a hell of a coaching job.
And it’s worth pointing out that this is the only NFL team with black coaches at each coordinator spot. Arians has done more for diversity in the coaching ranks than the Rooney Rule ever has and it’s no surprise that it’s paid off. Hopefully, the NFL lives up to its reputation as a copycat league and other teams expand their pool of candidates.
Though maybe I shouldn’t hold out hope, since they already missed a chance during this cycle: