Lars Anderson - A Season in the Sun

For my beautiful kids, Lincoln, Autumn, and Farrah. Know that daddy loves you, always.

I dont think the beautiful reality of it truly hit me until we were cruising down the Hillsborough River during the victory boat parade. I was holding the Lombardi Trophy when, all of a sudden, We Are the Champions blasted from a speaker. With the song by Queen thumping on my chest, my eyes welled with tears. Thats when I fully embraced it. We were the NFL champions of 2020. This book by Lars Anderson, who I have known and trusted for years, vividly tells the story of this very special season.

For me, the proudest part of the year was the collective job the players and the coaches did in beating COVID. The commitment they made, all those young guys, was incredible. All they did was go to work, go home, go to work, go home. We had only two players test positive for the coronavirusthat was unbelievable. Then we advance to the Super Bowl and safety Mike Edwards tests positive. Guess what? It was Mike Edwards Sr. They didnt check the birth certificate and it was Mikes dad. Nearly gave me a damned heart attack. Ive never seen anything close to the challenge we all faced because of COVID. We had to meet differently, we had to eat differently, we had to practice differently. I kept telling the team, Dont be the guy that screws up.

By about the middle of September, I told the players I was tired of being the head of the mask police, walking through the locker room and telling them to get your mask on. I emphasized that the guys either had to grow up and make a commitment to each other, or this wasnt gonna work.

Then the veteran guys took over. From that point on, I never had to say another word. The same thing happened after the loss in Chicago. Id been bitching about penalties for twenty games. Why did it stop? Because they finally had enough. That game turned my stomach.

Of course, you cant say enough about Tom Brady and what he did for our entire franchise. What I learned is he is one hell of a teammate. You see the glitz and the glamour, you already know hes a leader, but I didnt know he would take a young guy aside and say, You dont know how to take care of your body. When our great second-year linebacker Devin White didnt make the Pro Bowl, Devin was devastated. It was Tom who told Devin, Hey, weve got bigger fish to fry. He got Devin out of the funk.

Tom reads his teammates so well. When we signed Tom as a free agent, linebacker Lavonte David approached me and said, Coach, aint no doubt were gonna win. Lavonte is one of my main guys in the locker room. He said he could feel a difference in confidence the moment the team stepped onto the practice field for the first time with Tom. We just had to stay healthy.

Ive got to give our owners so much credit. The Glazers took a chance on me when they hired me in 2019. It wasnt like I was this young up-and-coming thirty-something offensive savantthis seems to be what most owners are now looking for when hiring head coaches. At the time I was sixty-eight. But I had a proven track recordId twice been named the Associated Press Coach of the Yearand I had a plan. Put simply, they believed in me. I cannot express the gratitude I and my family have for the Glazer family.

My assistantsand trust me, there are at least five guys who will one day be head coaches on this staffare family. They did a great job with all those Zoom calls during our virtual offseason and then during the season. I cannot teach over Zoom. I didnt do a single Zoom meeting the entire time, but our coaches were great in developing our young players.

I always go back to our staff because I wouldnt have taken this job if they werent available. People dont realize how good this staff is. Byron Leftwich gets absolutely no credit as offensive coordinator because they give it to me and Tom. But Byron put our game plan together with the rest of the offensive coaches. Ill have my hands in it. The job he did with Tom was unbelievable.

Tom had learned a certain way for twenty years. Byron and I coached a totally different way. Tom was trying to understand our playbook and how we coached while we were busy blending our offense with the things he was most comfortable doing. In other words, we had a lot going on. But Byron did a wonderful job of working with Tom. Byron should be on the short list for any general manager looking for a head coach in 2022.

Todd Bowles, our defensive coordinator, has a hell of a track record. He was named the leagues Assistant Coach of the Year when he was with me in Arizona. Hell be a head coach again, especially after his masterful game plan in the Super Bowl that shut down the Kansas City Chiefs. Ive known Todd since he played for me at Temple, and hes the defensive version of me: aggressive, risk-taking, and absolutely fearless.

I knew developing our young players would be huge. In 2019, I told the Glazers I wanted to have a large coaching staff. I said we were going to have two practices going at the same time in the spring. I wanted the veterans on one field, the young players on another. So when they got to training camp, they were ready to go. The Glazers let me have the staff I wanted.

Mike Caldwell (inside linebackers coach) was with me in Arizona, Nick Rapone (safeties) coached for me at Temple. Kevin Ross (cornerbacks) and Todd both played for me at Temple. Kacy Rodgers (defensive line) was with Todd when he was the head coach of the New York Jets. Joe Gilbert (offensive line) was with me at Indy. Keith Armstrong (special teams coordinator) was a captain for me at Temple. Larry Foote (linebackers) played for me at Pittsburgh and was on my staff in Arizona. I hired Cody Grimm as a defensive/special teams assistant; he is going to be a hell of a coach. Even before they arrived in Tampa, all of those defensive coaches knew the playbook. This is a family. We are a family. Nobodys gonna stab me in the back because the rest of them would kick his ass.

We found a gem in Thaddeus Lewis, a former NFL quarterback who played at Duke. This kids gonna be a star. He was a coaching intern with us last year and now hes going to be an assistant wide receivers coach. The NFL needs to do a better job of giving minority coaching candidates chances, and the internship program that Ive promoted has given so many guys like Byron and Thaddeus that chance. This needs to be a league-wide policy.

We have a lot of diversity on our staff and thats no accident. It starts with the Glazers. They believe strongly in it, obviously, with Darcie Glazer Kassewitz being a co-owner with her brothers. On our staff we have age differences (one of our offensive consultants, Tom Moore, who has been with me forever, is eighty-two and is one of my most trusted confidants), racial differences, and gender differences. Were the only team with a Black offensive coordinator (Leftwich), a Black defensive coordinator (Bowles), a Black special teams coordinator (Armstrong), and a Black assistant head coach (Harold Godwin). All four of these guys should be head coaches now, and I cant emphasize enough that we wouldnt have won the Super Bowl without the contributions of each and every one of my staff members. Loyalty is huge to meits honestly more important than moneyand these are some of the most loyal men Ive had the privilege to be around. By my side through this special season was Mike Chiurco, the assistant to the head coach, who is another one of my most loyal dudes.

We are also the only team in the league with two full-time female staff members: Lori Locust, our assistant defensive line coach, and Maral Javadifar, our assistant strength and conditioning coach. Women teach in different ways and footballs nothing but teaching. Back in early 2019 I went to speak at the University of AlabamaBirmingham (UAB) and bumped into Joe Pendry, who I once coached with at Kansas City. He asked me if I was looking for a female coach and said he knew a great one. He then put me in touch with Lori, who we brought in for an interview. She was a student when I coached at Temple back in the 1980s and she knows all my guyswe jokingly call our staff Temple South. She fit in right away. The coaches love her. Ndamukong Suh loves her. And everyone feels the same way about Maral Javadifar. I swear she must have eight degrees, and as soon as the players realized she knew her stuff, it was like the issue of gender just went away.