Bruce Arians Named 2014 AP Coach of the Year

After leading the Arizona Cardinals to their best regular-season record since 1975 and first playoff berth since 2009, Bruce Arians has been named the 2014 Associated Press Coach of the Year, per the NFL.

With this honor, Arians joins New England's Bill Belichick as the only active head coaches with multiple AP Coach of the Year trophies. He previously won the award in 2012 with the Indianapolis Colts when he went 9-3 as interim coach after taking over for Chuck Pagano. 

The Cardinals were a surprise team in 2013, Arians' first at the helm, winning 10 games and finishing one game out of the playoffs.

This year was his best season as a head coach, considering the Cardinals started the year with defensive stalwarts Daryl Washington and Darnell Dockett out for the year. Washington was suspended for violating the NFL's substance abuse policy, while Dockett tore the ACL in his right knee during preseason.  

During the season, Arizona lost quarterbacks Carson Palmer and Drew Stanton to injuries. Despite those issues, the Cardinals won 11 games and entered Week 17 with a chance to win the NFC West and be the No. 1 seed. 

Arians has never been one to let his success go to his head, telling Kent Somers of The Arizona Republic in September that he's seen the other side of things during his time in the NFL:

"

All of a sudden I'm the greatest damn coach in the world. I've been a sorry sumbitch for 17, 18 years now. It ain't just changed because we won a couple of games. You can't fall into that trap and forget the practice-every-single-day thing. That's the thing that gets you there; it's the process.

"

As ESPN's Ed Werder noted on Twitter, winning as many games as the Cardinals did with all of those issues made Arians' effort almost Herculean:

Now, with two Coach of the Year awards on his mantel and an 11-win campaign in 2014 given all the roster problems that happened, Arians isn't going to sneak up on anyone. He's going to have all the pressure on his shoulders to take this Arizona team to the next level. 

A lot of that pressure will also fall on Palmer, who was playing well before getting injured. The relationship between Palmer and Arians has been fruitful for all parties involved, so expect to see a better offense in 2015 if the star quarterback can stay healthy. 

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