The Tampa Bay Buccaneers should have worn name tags during their post-Super Bowl celebration Sunday night.
After the Bucs throttled the Kansas City Chiefs 31-9 to win Super Bowl LV, head coach Bruce Arians summed up the difficulty of playing this season amid a pandemic with a funny Rob Gronkowski anecdote.
“Just that kind of year,” Arians told NBC Sports’ Peter King. “You know, the virus. It’s been tough to build a close team in times like this. They couldn’t eat together. Gronk still doesn’t know everybody’s name.”
With COVID-19 restrictions limiting players’ off-the-field interactions, many traditional avenues for team-building — including simply hanging out together in the locker room — were not allowed in 2020. Bucs quarterback Tom Brady last week acknowledged he never got to know many of Tampa Bay’s defensive players on a personal level.
Arians also told King his wife met Brady for the first time during Sunday’s Lombardi Trophy presentation.
“My wife not meeting Tom ’til we’re on stage after winning the Super Bowl,” the coach said. “That speaks volumes of this whole year.”
Brady and Gronkowski, both in their first season with Tampa Bay following Hall of Fame runs in New England, played key roles in Super Bowl LV. The former earned Super Bowl MVP honors, and the latter caught two touchdown passes.
Gronkowski called their championship “hands-down one of the greatest accomplishments in sports history.”
