Sunday’s game between the Eagles and Buccaneers included a moment when Tampa Bay coach Bruce Arians went after safety Andrew Adams, slapping him in the helmet and following through with an elbow.
Arians, who told Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times after Sunday’s post-game press conference that the head coach was trying to stop Adams from drawing a penalty for pulling an Eagles player off the pile, was asked during his Monday press conference whether he regrets getting physical with a player.
“No, and I’ve seen enough dumb,” Arians said. “You can’t pull guys out of a pile. We just got a big play, great field position, and he’s trying to pull a guy out of a pile, and I was trying to knock him off of that guy so he didn’t get a penalty.”
Neither the league nor the NFL Players Association had a comment regarding Arians crossing a fairly bright line when it comes to appropriate player interaction. He’s the product of an era in which coaches kicked and punched and pulled players around by their facemasks as a remedy for “dumb” or lazy or whatever.
That doesn’t make it OK. To the extent the NFL is concerned about the messages sent to players at lower levels of the sport when it comes to taunting, the league also should be concerned about messages sent to coaches at lower levels of the sport when it comes to laying hands on players.