Bruce Arians was instrumental in bringing Baker Mayfield to Tampa

Bruce Arians never coached Baker Mayfield. Arians wanted to.

He did the next best thing. Arians helped get the Buccaneers to make Mayfield their post-Tom Brady quarterback.

“Yeah, that was one of my last decisions, you know, to get with Jason and let’s go after this; I love this kid,” Arians said recently on The National Football Show, via JoeBucsFan.com.“You know, when I was at CBS that one year, I did two [Browns games with Mayfield], went to Browns practice on Friday. That locker room loved that kid. I mean, loved him. And the way he competed in a Friday practice, I was like, ‘This is my kind of guy.'"

He ended up being the Bucs' kind of guy, too. In two years post-Brady, Mayfield has led the Buccaneers to a pair of division titles.

“He’s won that team over,” Arians said. "He’s won the city over. He owns the city right now, and rightfully so. He’s played his ass off.”

Arians stepped down in March 2022, a few weeks after Brady unretired — and after Miami's apparent effort to pair Brady with coach Sean Payton fell through. Arians stayed on as "senior advisor to the General Manager." (He's still listed on the team’s website as having that title.)

Arians's advice was solid. And it's not revisionist history. Arians said during the 2018 season that he’d coach the Browns, and only the Browns. (He took the Tampa Bay job after the 2018 season.)

After a year with Jameis Winston (he threw for more than 5,100 passing yards under Arians), Arians and the Bucs landed Brady. They won the Super Bowl in 2020. And if Brady had remained retired in 2022, the Bucs might have traded for Mayfield, whose time in Cleveland ended after they traded for Deshaun Watson.

The Bucs are quietly one of the most consistent contenders of the decade. They have a Super Bowl win, followed by four straight NFC South championships. As the draft approaches, they don't have many (if any) glaring needs.

But they continue to be widely overlooked and underestimated. Sort of like Mayfield.