INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – Colts offensive coordinator Bruce Arians remained in a Baltimore hospital on Monday, a day after he was missed the team’s playoff loss to the Ravens.
On Twitter, team owner Jim Irsay wrote that Arians was feeling better and that the team hoped Arians could return home later Monday.
“Every test that they ran on Bruce, and obviously they put him through a battery of tests, A to Z as they would do any of us, all have been negative,” coach Chuck Pagano said. “So he’s doing well. Whatever he’s dealing with, they would have let him come home early this morning, but whatever he’s dealing with affected his blood pressure and they’re not going to release him until they get the blood pressure under control, which they will.”
Arians was admitted to a Baltimore hospital Sunday with an undisclosed illness, leaving quarterbacks coach Clyde Christensen to call the plays in the 24-9 season-ending loss to the Ravens.
The Colts want him back in the locker room and yet they think he’s done enough to warrant being an NFL head coach. It’s a delicate balancing act for the Colts, who have given permission to at least two teams, Chicago and Philadelphia, to speak with Arians about their coaching vacancies.
There has been speculation that Cleveland and San Diego are interested in Arians, too.
Teams seeking a younger, more image-conscious coach may not be interested in the 60-year-old Arians, who has a penchant for telling it like it is and in a folksy way. His only previous head-coaching experience came during a six-year at Temple in the 1980s.
But it’s hard to argue with the rest of his resume.
After Pagano was diagnosed with leukemia in September, Arians became the interim coach and guided the Colts to a 9-3 mark. That tied the NFL record for most victories after a midseason coaching change.
He mentored Peyton Manning, Tim Couch, Ben Roethlisberger and now Andrew Luck. He won two Super Bowls as an assistant in Pittsburgh, served on Paul “Bear” Bryant’s staff at Alabama and has had a big part in two of the biggest turnarounds in NFL history – the 10-game improvement of the 1999 Colts and Indy’s nine-game improvement this year.
Clearly, the Colts (11-6) want him to come back, but they also understand why he’s a hot commodity on the coaching carousel – just one year after he was nearly forced into retirement.
“We do not want to lose Bruce,” Pagano said. “He is so valuable to this organization and what he means to this organization and what he’s done. You want the best for Bruce. I want the best for Bruce. I want the best for his family. I want him to achieve and reach any goals that he has for himself throughout his coaching years, things like that. It’s a hard spot. Again, people are going to go after good people and this is just a byproduct of the success that we’ve had here.”
Luck said he wants Arians back, too.
“Selfishly, I hope he doesn’t go anywhere,” Luck said before jokingly reiterating what he said last week — that if teams asked him for a recommendation he would say terrible things about Arians to keep him in Indy.
He’s not the only one at the team complex trying to do that.
“We will just use social media. We will get on the Internet, just like they do around draft time with all the players, all the baggage starts to come out,” Pagano said, drawing laughter. “We won’t do it here. We will just wait until later this evening, the next couple of weeks and start putting all that stuff out if it get serious.”
The likelihood is that those talks will get serious.
Arians has repeatedly told reporters in Indy that he will only leave for the right fit and that wherever he lands, he still wants to call the plays — even if that means staying in Indy where the entire offense would like to have him back for Year 2 of the Colts’ reconstruction project.
“I want to be selfish but I can’t,” tight end Dwayne Allen said. “Bruce is such a great guy and what he did for us this year, the job as a head coach and an offensive coordinator was just unbelievable and he deserves an opportunity if he wants to. Hopefully he decides to stay with us because we’d love to have him but if we have to part ways, then so be it.”
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