It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, telling my players the news: I am retiring.

I love my players, love the sacrifices they’ve made for me and our staff, but put simply, it’s now time for me to move on to the next act of my life.

Something just changed for me this year—it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what that was, hard to put into words—and I wasn’t enjoying the game as much as I had in the past. This wasn’t fair to my players, my coaches or the fans. So I informed Michael that this would be my final year of coaching. I wanted to immediately tell the media, but I needed to keep this information as quiet as possible. The last thing I wanted was for me to become a distraction for our players.

I had a heart-to-heart with my family about my future. We discussed it from every angle—returning to the Cardinals in 2018, retiring at the end of ’17 season, even the possibility of my wife moving to our “Forever Home” in Georgia for the ’18 season while I still in Arizona—but in the end I decided it was time to walk away from coaching. I need to be a husband, a dad, and a grandfather.

Still, I’ve been on the fence about this decision up until just a few hours ago, my heart and my head battling over what the right move is. I feel like we have so much unfinished business here with the Cardinals—the last two seasons have been major disappointments because we’ve failed to make the playoffs—and I considered renting an apartment next year in Phoenix, living alone, and making one final charge at the Super Bowl.

To the fans of the Cardinals—The Birdgang—I’ll never leave your side. The Red Sea always was behind me, so thunderous in your support, and I’ll continue to be active in the Phoenix community and support the Cardinals. Words can’t express my gratitude to the Birdgang, the best fans in the NFL.

The Arians Family Foundation, which we founded in 2013, strives to help children in the court system that have been abused or neglected by their families, and our foundation will never stop being their advocate. We will still be fighting for children in the Valley.

But as I weighed my decision, my thoughts kept returning to my family—to my wife Chris, to my son Jake and my daughter Kristi. I missed so much of my children’s development because I was imprisoned in the office. One of the first rules I told my assistants in Arizona when I got the head coaching job in 2013 was that they had to be out of the office by 10 p.m. And if they ever needed to be at one of their children’s games or recitals and anything that was important, I always encouraged them to go, no matter what time of day they needed to leave the office. These are times you can’t get back.

Now I have a baby grandson Asher, who lives with my daughter and son-in-law in Birmingham, Alabama. I wasn’t available during much of my granddaughter’s Presley’s childhood in Birmingham—I was so far away from her coaching in Pittsburgh and so tied down to football that I felt like I couldn’t get away—and I’m not going to let that happen again with Asher.

I want to be active in Asher’s life—I call him “Fuzz,” because of the fuzzy hair he had on his body when he was born—and I don’t want him to only see me on television on Sundays. I want to teach him how to fish, how to play golf, how to throw a football—things I wish I had had more time to do with my own children. I’m not going to miss out on the chance of being a grandfather who is present in his life.

Still, this decision was very hard. The prospect of possibly working with Carson Palmer for one more season, if he comes back, is exciting. I always told Carson and future Hall of Famer Larry Fitzgerald that we were like three old gunfighters looking to go out in a blaze of glory with a Super Bowl win. It pains me that I couldn’t help them accomplish our goal.

I also looked forward to developing a young quarterback for the organization. My biggest professional passion is working with quarterbacks, and I hope that is part of my coaching legacy.

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It’s a minor miracle that Michael Bidwill even gave me a chance. Heck, I was 60 years old at the time, and the trend in the NFL now is to hire younger head coaches, not old cats like me who have been in the game for nearly 40 years.

For my first informal interview for the Cardinals job, I met with Michael and general manager Steve Keim at Tarbells, a Zagat top-10 restaurant in the Valley.

I like to think of myself as a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy. So many people over the years have told me that I’m no good at playing politics and that I was a fool for never having a résumé on hand to give out to general managers. And maybe that did hurt me along the way, maybe I would have gotten a chance to interview for an NFL head coaching position when I was younger. But I’ve always felt it’s important never to pretend to be something you’re not. Maybe that’s why I’ve gotten along so well with the majority of reporters over the years; I mean what I say and I say what I mean. With me, there is no sugarcoating, no dancing around the truth, no double talk.

I’m pretty sure I dropped my first F-bomb in the meeting with Michael and Steve only minutes into our conversation. “Where the fuck are our drinks?” I wondered. Later, Michael would comment that his first impression of me was that I could use the word “fuck” as a noun, an adjective, and verb in a single sentence.

My comment prompted a wry, kinda shit-eating grin from Steve. The two of us are cut from the same blue-collar cloth. We’re both hardcore Pennsylvanians, we both had parents who worked factory jobs, and we’ve both been around football our entire lives. Our rapport was lightening-flash instant. He told me he was looking for someone with experience. “Brother,” I told him, “I’ve got a shitload of experience.”

Even though I was hardly a coach out of central casting, Michael gave me a chance—and I can’t thank him enough. In my first year, we went 10-6. My second season we made the playoffs as a wildcard with an 11-5 record. Then in 2015 we won our division by going 13-3, but we lost to the Panthers in the NFC title game. Each year we were making strides, advancing deeper into the playoffs, packing our roster with more and more talent. We needed to take one more step, and I genuinely believed we would be Super Bowl bound in the 2016 season.

But in the last two years we’ve been ravaged by injuries. It’s not an excuse—injuries are a fact of life in the NFL—but we’ve been hit especially hard. There have been times when I haven’t even known the name of a player at practice because we had just signed him off the street. Other times I’d walk through our training room and count the number of Pro Bowl players in there trying to recover from injuries.

We missed the playoffs last year and again in 2017. That’s another reason why this is so hard for me—I feel like I have so much more to accomplish in Arizona. The nucleus is still here, a core of players capable of doing something special in 2018. I’m also concerned that me stepping away could have a chilling effect on owners giving older guys like me a chance to become a head coach. I hope that’s not the case, because the last thing I want is for some owner to point at me and say, “Look, Bruce only lasted five years before he retired.”

I had some health problems last year. In February 2017, doctors removed a small portion of my cancerous kidney. I’m still cancer free, but there’s no question the stress of the job had exacted a toll on me. Moving forward, I’m going to be a voice and advocate for cancer research and testing.

The health issues changed my outlook on life and football. More than I ever, I realize nothing is guaranteed in life. Every day needs to be enjoyed and celebrated to the fullest. Roses need to be smelled, sunsets savored, time with family cherished

We’ve moved 17 times in my career—that’s 17 times Chris has had to pack up our house and figure out where our next home would be. When our kids were at home, she had to determine where they would go to school. She basically raised our kids by herself. I can never repay her for all she’s done, but I’m sure going to try.

We’re going to live fulltime at our lake house in Reynolds Plantation, Georgia, which we’ve owned for 11 years but never lived in more than a few months a year. I’m going to play golf, fish and spend nights on our porch with friends and family, sipping Crown on the rocks and telling tales—some maybe a little taller than others. This will be my new home field. This is where I’ll be enjoying the sunsets.

But the sun definitely hasn’t gone down on my career. This cowboy still plans to be riding. Rest assured, the game will never be far from me. Football is the air I breathe, and I’m hoping to share all the secrets I’ve learned over the years.

I’ll also help Steve Keim anyway I can. Steve is as talented as any general manager in the league. He’s become like a little brother to me—we’ve been virtually inseparable since the day I was hired—and the Cardinals future is bright with him making the key personnel decisions.

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I’ve had so many mentors who guided me in my career, from Jimmy Sharp at Virginia Tech to Bear Bryant at Alabama

I was an assistant on Bryant’s final staff in Tuscaloosa. My last meeting with him was in office. I’d just been named the head coach at Temple, and the Bear told me to carry one piece of wisdom with me for the rest of my days.

“Coach them hard,” Bryant told me, “and hug them harder later.”

Those were the last words Bryant ever uttered to me. He died a few weeks later, but what he told me became my guiding philosophy.

From that day forward I would try to find out what makes a player tick and continually build on the player’s strengths and not prey on their weaknesses—just like Bryant did. You always need to fix some of their weaknesses, but you first pad their confidence so that that it grows and then they can attack their weaknesses.

Like Bryant, I would be hard on my players when we’re on the field. But that’s just coaching. The players need to know that I’m probably going to talk to them real ugly out on the field, but that has nothing to do with them personally or with their personality. Their football can suck and they can still be good people. Don’t take it personally. It’s coaching, not a criticism. Don’t worry if I’m hard on you on the field. It’s business, not personal.

And I vowed that day after leaving Bryant’s office that when I walked off the field with my players, I would hug the ones I had MF’d only moments earlier—just like Bryant did. I’d tell them we’re going to get our football perfect, we’re not going to beat ourselves, and now that we’re done with football for the day we can talk all night long about our personal lives. And I would care about all my players, from the starting quarterback down to the third-string tight end.

More than anything, I hope this is what I’m remembered for.

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At its core, coaching isn’t about winning and losing. At the college level, coaching is about molding teenagers into men and becoming positive, productive members of society. In the NFL, it’s about building relationships.

Most NFL coaches don’t socialize with their players. I did. When players walked out of University of Phoenix Stadium after our games, the first car they’d see in the parking lot was mine. The trunk would be open and I’d be there serving beer, mixed drinks, shots—you name it. The bartender in me—I used to sling drinks at a dive in college— always made sure you were taken care of. And of I course, I made sure everyone was responsible and had a safe way home.

If a player had a bad game, I’d give him a beer and a big, sincere hug. If a player had a great game, I’d give him a beer and a big, sincere hug. You see, I know they each tried; they each gave it their best shot. Sometimes you come up short; sometimes you go over the top. If you’ve earned the trust of your teammates, if you’ve played with determination, if you’ve been a team player—regardless of a one-time outcome—you got the beer and the hug. And then I always asked both players if there was anything I could do to help them get ready for the start of our preparation for the next game.

One time Larry Foote, after attending my tailgate, walked up to me. Larry had known me a long time—he played linebacker with me in Pittsburgh and Arizona and is now a Cardinals assistant coach—and he said, “B.A., how’s it feel to be the coolest coach in the NFL.”

I’d never thought of it way, I said. I told Larry, “Hey, I’m just being me, brother.”

I will continue on just being me. I have a plan for the future. The way I see it, I’m only starting the second half of my football life.

In the years ahead, I’ll be involved with the fans and the game I love so much.

As I’ve always said:

No risk it, no biscuit.

(Top photo: Wesley Hitt/Getty Images)