Buccaneers, Cardinals, Browns, and Broncos All Find New Head Coaches

Bruce Arians with the Cardinals in 2017
Bruce Arians with the Cardinals in 2017. Photo by Roger Goodgroves/REX/Shutterstock (9147020o)

There are less and less NFL teams with coaching vacancies each day. After the Green Bay Packers zeroed in on Matt LaFleur, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Arizona Cardinals, Cleveland Browns, and Denver Broncos all followed and found their new head coaches in the last 48 hours. New York Jets, Cincinnati Bengals, and Miami Dolphins now remain the only teams in the league without an HC.

Buccaneers were the first one to find a new HC, agreeing to a four-year deal with Arians on Tuesday. Arians, who decided to retire as Cardinals’ coach after the 2017 season, spent the last year as an NFL analyst for CBS.  He will succeed Dirk Koetter, who was fired after three seasons in which he compiled 19-29 record.

“Bruce Arians is one of the NFL’s most well-respected coaches over the past two decades, and we are excited to have him leading our team,” – said Buccaneers owner Bryan Glazer in a statement. “Throughout this process, we focused on finding the right coach with a proven ability to elevate our players and lead our team forward. Bruce has played a large role in the development and career success of some of our league’s best players, and we look forward to seeing him continue that work here with our franchise.”

Cardinals, on the other hand, decided to turn to college football for their new head coach hiring Kliff Kingsbury to replace Steve Wilks. Kingsbury was fired as Texas Tech coach in November after he had three straight losing seasons. 

Browns decided to stay in the house after interviewing several candidates and choose their interim offensive coordinator Freddie Kitchens as the man who will lead the franchise in the future. Kitchens doesn’t have previous head coaching experience and was relatively unknown before taking over OC job in Week 9 of 2018 NFL season. The 44-year-old, who joined the franchise just a year ago as a running backs coach, is credited with getting most out of Browns’ offense in the eight games he called plays which was a big reason why the front office decided to give him this promotion.

Finally, Chicago Bears’ defensive coordinator Vic Fangio is getting the HC job with Broncos. Fangio doesn’t have the experience of being at the helm of an NFL team but has spent the last 33 years serving at various assistant positions. He is credited for turning the Bears’ defense, which was 30th in the NFL before he joined in 2014, into NFL’s No.1 defense in scoring and takeaways.

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