Bruce Arians and Tom Brady may no longer be on the sidelines helping the Tampa Bay Buccaneers win games, but they are forever loved thanks to their 2020 Super Bowl win and two-year run that stands as the best in franchise history.

The duo combined to win the aforementioned Lombardi, the first division title in 14 years, and 24 games over a two-season span. The win total matched Arians' previous two-year career-high when he won 24 games with the Arizona Cardinals in 2014-2015, but he certainly didn't win a Super Bowl back then. A blowout loss to the Carolina Panthers in the NFC Championship Game was as far as he got.

The track record of success with Brady is what makes Arians' recent comments on his podcast, No Risk It No Biscuit with Bruce Arians and Melanie Collins, so interesting. 

Arians was asked, of all the quarterbacks he coached in the NFL, which quarterback he'd prefer, down two-minutes and needing a score to win: Andrew Luck, Ben Roethlisberger, or Brady?

Arians picked Luck without hesitation.

"I'm going to piss a bunch of 'em off, but I'm going to say Andrew Luck because of what he did as a rookie," Arians said. "I mean, we win 7 out of 11 in the last two minutes and he's playing with five other rookies on offense. His command and his poise and his grit – Andrew Luck was an amazing, young player when I had him."

He then proceeded to pick Roethlisberger in a "big game" situation, aka the Super Bowl.

"In the big game, I'm taking Ben. 'Cause Ive been in the big game with Ben. We went 92-yards [to win the Super Bowl] and people don't realize he only had two receivers he could throw to. Nate Washington had a separated shoulder and Hines [Ward's] knee was gone.

"So he could only throw it to Santonio [Holmes] or Heath Miller. So, Santonio gets the MVP because he just kept throwing to him."

It's like Arians just completely forgot Brady existed during his reply. His reasons for picking both guys are logical, but there's no reason, even anecdotally, to pick anyone other than Brady.

For starters, Brady is the the greatest two-minute quarterback of all-time. From 2001-2019 (excluding 2008), when he was with the New England Patriots, Brady encountered 26 drives that started with 2:00 or less left on the clock where he was down by six points or less. Brady converted 10 of those drives into game-winning drives, which came out to a 38.4% conversion rate. That is nearly twice as high as the NFL's 19.7% average rate during that span. 

He only faced four drives of that nature with Arians, but he won one game in regulation (2021 Dallas Cowboys) and eventually won the other in overtime (2021 Buffalo Bills). Still, Brady's 25% clip is very impressive – the overtime win doesn't count since the question was phrased as winning the game with two minutes to go. Plus, he amassed eight game-winning drives under Arians – six of them just didn't start with 2:00 or less left in the game. 

For Luck, three of seven game-winners Arians mentioned from 2012 fit the above criteria, with one of the wins coming in overtime, a la Brady. Overall, he faced five total scenarios down six with 2:00 or less to go and he converted two without going to overtime. A 40% clip is obviously great, but it's still an unbiasedly small sample size.

When stretching it out over the course of Luck's career, he converted just 2 of his next 17 opportunities into game-winning drives and, including 2012, finished his career with a conversion rate of 21.1%.

And if we want to get into extraneous circumstances, Brady led the Buccaneers to eight-straight victories to win the Super Bowl and he played that entire season with a torn MCL. Brady also won Super Bowl MVP, unlike Roethlisberger, so he showed Arians first-hand that he can be "the guy" in a big game. Like he needed to do that, anyway.

Arians always has something interesting to say and it's typically entertaining and that's exactly where this fits. But at the same time, that's all it is – interesting and entertaining. He also didn't really answer the question correctly, but hey, no one is nitpicking, here.

He is way off, at the end of the day, but hey, it's his opinion. It's just unfortunate it's a wrong one.

Featured image via Nathan Ray Seebeck-USA TODAY Sports