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Byron Leftwich slips into the Northern Virginia brunch spot unrecognized and unbothered. Lean and broad-shouldered at 6-foot-5, the former NFL quarterback looks like he could still play even though his 45th birthday looms in a couple of weeks. After a nine-year playing career, Leftwich made a meteoric rise up the coaching ranks. As offensive coordinator of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he helped Tom Brady and Bruce Arians on a storybook Super Bowl march to cap the 2020 season. Leftwich was a legitimate head coaching candidate in the winter of 2022.
But time moves quickly, circumstances change and memories fade. So on this chilly morning in the middle of football season, Leftwich is just another guy lost in the hustle and bustle of the DMV. He has spent the last two football seasons largely shrouded in mystery — once a virtual lock to lead his own team, then fired, then off the grid. And thanks to his relatively solitary nature, Leftwich’s goals and whereabouts have remained murky.
I. Want. To. Coach, he says emphatically over what’s left of his fried eggs, bacon, and a biscuit. After a year-and-a-half devoted largely to his 14-year-old son, Dominic — making breakfast, dropping off and picking up, traveling up and down the East Coast for a demanding AAU basketball circuit, watching every football practice and game — Leftwich wants back in the coaching game.
There’s something missing… I really do feel as though something’s not there, and I’ve got to get back to it, he says, who received his son’s blessing to return. I’m really into helping other players. I want to help them to play the best. I love to teach.
Leftwich viewed his sabbatical as an exercise in patience. After things ended in Tampa, he promised himself he wouldn’t pounce on any opportunity for the sake of landing a gig. He didn’t direct members of his small circle to drum up a media campaign to keep his name hot and wasn’t about to ask counterparts for handouts. Confident in his body of work, Leftwich maintained a belief that at the right time, the right job would present itself.
Two hiring cycles quietly came and went, but Leftwich has remained unshaken. Some league insiders believe Leftwich’s under-the-radar approach may have cost him. But it’s the route he feels most comfortable with, even if his supporters wish he were more outspoken.
Byron will not push himself out there. He’s going to do it on his work, says Arians, Leftwich’s offensive coordinator in Pittsburgh and coaching mentor in Arizona and Tampa Bay. But I’ll say it: I think it’s total bullsh– that he’s not a head coach in this league.
… He’s the toughest and one of the smartest, brightest dudes I know, Arians says. He was such a bright quarterback, and he had a great rapport with young players. … Guys have questions, he could answer anything and everything: Why and how it’s going to make you better if you do it this way. He just has a great feel for the game.
Awesome leadership qualities have always oozed out of him, Tomlin says. Some of it comes from the position he played, but he has always had an ease about him when it comes to leadership. He’s comfortable in his own skin and gets along well with people, and he carries himself in a way that commands respect.
Leftwich doesn’t view the 2022 season as a total failure. Given the calamity he and his players faced and all of the mixing and matching he had to do to compensate, he views that season as his best coaching job. It forced him to grow.
… Being fired means nothing, it’s just the nature of the business, Leftwich says. You can’t worry about being fired. Believe in what you believe in, do what’s best for the players, and accept everything they could come with it.
Following his Tampa Bay departure, he expected to receive inquiries, but no NFL teams called. He received some interest in college positions, but some of those would have required him to make what he believed were rushed decisions, so he declined. Others didn’t seem like good fits, so he embraced the opportunity to make up for lost time with his son.
… Just as he used to get up at 3 a.m. for film study, practice, and game planning, he now gets up at 3 a.m. without the use of an alarm clock. Instead of reporting to an office, he hits the weights, then the punching bags. By mid-morning, after he feeds Dominic and gets him to school, Leftwich finds himself in front of a screen, clicker in hand.
He studies the coaches film of every NFL team. When watching live, he calls plays as if he were in the quarterback’s ear. Sometimes his predictions are correct, sometimes they’re not, but Leftwich makes the next call regardless. He digs deep to expand his knowledge of offensive and defensive patterns and tendencies, “staying sharp and up on what everybody’s doing.”
… He has a 360-degree perspective of the game — not only offense but defense as well, Tomlin says. Certain people have the ability to see the game in 3-D, and Byron is one of them.
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