Franchise Tag Candidates, Important Offseason Dates | Bucs Insider

a chance to do that. Now is the time of year that there are a lot of things that are going to start happening in terms of roster building looking forward to the team. So first of all, just give us a little bit of an idea of a couple of things coming up on the calendar that Bucks fans

might want to watch. Well, the next I guess date on the calendar of some significance is the start of the two week window in which teams can use franchise and transition tags on their players, and that's next Tuesday.

That's when that will begin. And then you have two weeks leading up too close to free agency to do that if you soak shoes, and then the NFL scouting combine is back and missed a year last year due to the pandemic, but um, it's back in person and that's always a big event that draws pretty much all the personnel people and coaches and media from around the league to Indianapolis. So that would be March one to March seven, and then the start of free agency, which

is the new calendar year for the NFL, is March sixteen. Okay, So let's talk a little bit about the franchise tag part Um, What are some of the potential options for it, how likely it is the team uses it. Just kind of break down some of the things that maybe we

would want to know when it comes to the franchise tag. Well, you know, the last couple of years, the big story for the Buccaneers and free agency was how well they were able to retain all of their key free agents, especially last year, and in both cases, one of the key elements there was using the franchise tag, first on Shack Barrett in two thousand twenty and then on Chris Godwin last year, And in both cases that really helped because that was one off the table that you didn't

have to worry about. And in Shack's case, it d it end up leeding to a long term contracts to keep around for a long time, which is great. That didn't happen with Chris Godwin, and so people are gonna wonder with the Bucks um tag Chris Godwin for the second year in a row. The issues there are when you when you do that a second year in a row, you have to give them one of what they had last year, or if the formula works out to being

more than you've give them that. But it's gonna be at least about nineteen point three million dollars for the wide receiver franchise tag for Chris Godwin this year. Obviously he's probably worth that given what he does to the team, but you're also talking about a player who is early in the stages of recovering from a knee injury, and that always makes it harder for teams to make big long term decision well not long term, but big decisions

on right now, So that complicates matters. I would think probably the most likely candidate if the Bucks decided to do with three years in a row is Carlton Davis, because the Bucks certainly think and I think a lot of people run the league think that he's a number one caliber cornerback. He's also only twenty five years old, and it's hard to hard to let that go, you know what I'm saying. So the franchise tag for a Corners about seventeen million dollars. That's a lot, but you

know that's market value. So we'll see. I would think he's probably the most likely one, Okay. And we had a question um from Seawan asking what is your prediction of what position we will draft in the first round?

And uh, that kind of also links to what I was gonna ask next about the combine coming up and just how we feel like the draft evaluation process itself might be different this year compared to last year when you were bringing everybody back for sure, and you have, you know, just how things might be different terms of how you're evaluating not only the first round pick, but but the draft overall. And so yeah, for you first round, what position seems likely and then overall, how you think

they're going to be evaluating draft prospects this year. Okay, So it's a little tough that question right now in mid February, and you kind of alluded to the reason why there's a long list of free agents, and depending upon whom the Buccaneers can bring back will really in packed how they decided to go. Last year, we all remember the story was the Buccaneers were in a position to draft just about anywhere they wanted to. Um edge rusher did seem like the most likely candidate for a

clip position, and that's how it ended up being. But it was sort of a luxury draft in which you could really go best player available. I don't think that's gonna be the case this year. I think the Buccaneers are gonna have a hard time getting all of those free agents back. Probably lose one or two of them. I don't want to predict predict two, but it's hard to imagine us getting all of them back. So if

you lose Carlton Davis, quarterbacks suddenly becomes very important. Also because Sean Murphy, Bunting and Javel Dean will be in line to hit for agency next year. So depending upon what you're able to keep out of all those guys, corner can become an issue really quickly. And Uh, I'm gonna fall back on the line that you've heard me say a million times, Casey, you can never have enough quality cornerbacks, So to me, I like that, Uh, the Bucks probably could use another edge rusher, who knows if

Jpp is gonna be back. Um, you could always use help on the offensive line, who knows if Ryan Jensen is gonna be back. So one of those three positions probably would be at the top of my list. And then running back. And I'm not a big proponent of first round and running backs, but we were talking about the end of the first round around where the Buccaneers took Doug Martin ten years ago and that worked out pretty well. So there's a lot of possibilities. But we'll

have a better focus on that after free agency begins. Okay, and we asked me about evaluating players. I think the biggest thing about the combine, being back and in person is not the workouts, because the scouts and coaches will always tell you they know what they know from film, uh and the pro days, they'll get plenty of time to see the players work out there. What they value most is those sit down meetings in the evenings, and those obviously had to be conducted via zoom last year.

I think the fact that you'll get to be back sitting down with all those guys for that whole week and just knocking out tons of fifteen minute interviews is probably the biggest difference in the evaluation process this year. Right, Yeah, that makes sense alright. Our next question was from Eric. He said, do you see us getting a quarterback in free agency? There's not a bumper crop of quarterbacks in

fre agency. I think the biggest names are like Teddy Bridgewater, Tyrod Taylor, Jamis Winston, which seems very unlikely, and that's I'm probably missing one or two of them there, but it's not It's not a really exciting group, I would say.

So that's why there's so much speculation about every quarterback who seemingly doesn't have does not have a totally solid will to stay with the team he's with right now, where the team may want to move on, like San Francisco may want to turn to Trey Lance and let Jimmy Garoppolo go. So that's why you're hearing all that. And those names are a little bit more exciting because their guys like Russell Wilson. So I don't know that the free agent market doesn't seem like a bumper crop

right now. Right. Sean had asked if you see us bringing back Richard Sherman as a potential coach, considering he ended up being used in that role some this season. Well, that depends on if Richard Sherman wants to transition into coaching right now. I know injuries kind of marred his attempt to come back with us here last year and he ended up not playing a ton of games. But he might still want to play, you know what I'm saying. Um, But yeah, I mean sure, he obviously is good at it.

And and uh, we've seen Bruce Arians through the years at times do that quickly. With some of these players, you know, they finished their career and they're coaching almost right away, So it's possible. Sure, Okay, And I'm sure you're shocked that we've had a whole bunch of questions about just the quarterback situation at large. Um. So we will again run back what we can know at this point in time. We know that we're gonna be talking

about this every Wednesday, as as we should. I know that this is a huge topic of discussion for all of the fans and everything going on. So I'll essentially sum up all the different versions of it, um, from whether it's someone yelling at us who is going to be our quarterback? Always love the all Caps questions really really fun, and then also the idea of just what is the most likely route we would go, whether it's in house, draft, free agency trade. Well, starting in house,

there's only one quarterback under contract right now. Well that's not technically true because Tom Brady remains technically on the roster, but he's retired. Um Kyle Trash, the second year guy who we drafted at the end of the second round last year, didn't really get to see him play, so it's really kind of hard to evaluate if he'd be ready at the start of next season. Blaine Gabbert is actually a pending unrestricted free agent again like he was

last year. But I believe that if the Buccaneers came to him and said we want to resign you and you have a real good job, just fight for the starting job, he'd probably be pretty motivated to come back. So even though he's not under contract yet for two I think he remains one of the options. Uh. We talked already just a minute ago about how the free agency field isn't really strong at quarterback this year, so

that one seems unlikely to me. So then you're talking about possible trade acquisitions, and listen, we can be asked this every week. There's no way we're going to have an answer for that right now until things start happening. But I kind of in a bigger sense, do think that the Buccaneers will try to take a big swing like they did two years ago with Tom Brady. You can't take a bigger swing than Tom Brady, but you can take a pretty big swing, and uh, I think

they'll try. It. Doesn't mean it's not gonna be easy because there's salary cap considerations and what do you give up in a trade? And does any team even want to trade their stud quarterbacks? So, but I just think because this roster is still so so talented at so many positions, uh, that the Buccaneers consider themselves contenders, that window is still open. And so the first thing we'll do is try to swing big and then if that doesn't work out, then you have to, you know, try

something like Lane Gabbard or somebody from the fage market. Okay, well that is going to do it for us. On this edition of Buccaneers Insider Live presented by Miller Lte. Thanks as always for those great questions. We'll be back here next week again to answer them, so we'll see you then