Franchise Tag Options & Most Important Free Agents | Bucs Insider

free agency and draft and a lot of potentials. You know that instead of breaking down individual games or plays or things like that, we get to kind of be a little bit more hypothetical and look at the big picture here. So as we get people chance to start asking some of those questions and tell us what's on their mind. I know that we sort of wrote an interesting point in the calendar when it comes especially to

the franchise tag. So tell everybody a little bit about the timing of what all is going on at this point in the year and when we might know some things. Yeah, when you win the Super Bowl, these things come up on you fast. Uh, usually you're writing about in a few weeks. This is gonna happen. It's already upon us. Yesterday was the beginning of the two week window in which teams can use franchise or transition tags. It ends on March nine. That always is supposed to end eight

days before the start of free agency. Obviously, UM free agents need some time to plan for free agency based upon whether or not they have that tag or not. UM. You know, the Buccaneers last year used it on Shack Buried. Everybody knows that, and just as a reminder, they waited until the very last day of that window to actually

put that tag on officially, which makes sense. You might as well just continue negotiating on a possible long term deal until the last minute and then that franchise tag off and serves as basically a way to extend that exclusive window. It didn't work out in terms of getting shocked to a long term deal last year. Both sides think that had a lot to do with the pandemic

that just made everything difficult. Uh So now we're back needing another contract for Shack, so he's an option, although his um his salary would be very high on the tag because it would be of what he got last year. You got Chris Godwin, Levante, David, a bunch of a bunch of guys that could be candidates. And I know that Chris God was definitely one a lot of people

have talked about. And he was on the Pat McAfee show yesterday and was asked, of course about free agency and all of his decisions and what did it sound like in terms of, um, what could happen with him? And overall if you just look at this team, you know, how many of these free agents do you think it's feasible we could keep? And who would the franchise tag maybe makes the most sense for well, I think in terms of how many we keep, you know, there's twenty

four free agents. Obviously there's there's a subset that's a higher priority, and uh, I think it was maybe on a serious show recently coach Arean said that there's six guys he didn't say which that are the biggest priority, and that they hope they can keep at least five of them. Obviously six would be the best, But um, I think I probably named most of them there. You could probably also throw into that group, Ryan suck Up,

Leonard for Nett, Rob Gronkowski, Antonio Brown. Um, I hope I didn't forget anybody, and Dominican sue if I didn't already say that one. Um, you know the most likely guy probably for the tag is Chris Godwin. And yeah, he said a number of things that, frankly, is what you would expect him to say. Um, he's a he's a great player about to get his first big payday, which is a big moment in a great player's career.

And he's also a very smart guy. And he's a guy coming off of a world championship that believes this is a team that could chase more of them. And he said a number of things including, you know, this is his chance to get paid and that's what you play for, and of course he said that, and he also said he likes it here, and he said he wouldn't take a little bit more to go to a place where he'd be miserable, So you know, he's not gonna it doesn't sound like he would just chase the

absolute highest contract, regardless of where it was. And those kind of things I think should give you optimism as a Buccaneers fan. And just a reminder everybody, if you have questions for us, you can put them any comments section of the live video on Facebook. Um, and I just wanted to hear a little bit about the way that this team was structured and we we think of it as the individual guys, but are there may be positions that would be more important to try to hang

onto that player based on trying to replace them. You know that instead of looking at it as just that guy individually, UM, looking at it a little bit in that direction. Yeah. I think I might have said this before when trying to determine which of these all these free agents you most want to get back. You know, you got to look at both Lavante and Shack because I think they would be difficult to replace. Um, you know, Shack sack totals, he missed the last game of the year.

I think he went down to maybe he went from nineteen point five leading the NFL down to eight or nine this year, but the peripheral stats like pressures show it he was just as good. So you're talking about one of the better pass rushers in the league, and those are hard to find and we would be very

difficult to replace. You might feel a little bit better about it if you were picking in the top ten, even although this isn't a great year for pass rushers, but it's gonna be hard to find a guy that you would really expect to be as impactful as as Shack at pick number thirty two, and then Lavante David,

you know a player there. There are some good linebacker prospects in the draft, but I I know you want to try to win the Super Bowl again this year, and I'd be hard pressed to expect you could find a guy that's as good as Lavante to step in. I think by the end of the year it was pretty clear that having Lavonte and Devin White together, they're probably the best inside linebacker do in the NFL. Was really what was driving how good that defense was. Yeah,

I completely agree with that. Um and Justin had asked, who do you think is open for restructuring? So let's kind of pair that with a question just overall about the salary cap situation. What we know because I think since our last show is maybe when the league was coming out saying a little bit more about what the salary cap number would even be. So what do we

know about that situation now? Well, what they did was they agreed, the union and the and the league agreed to raise the floor the lowest possible thing that the salary cap would be this year to one or an eighty, which is down almost twenty million from last year, and that that's an unprecedented situation, and we all know the reason why. But when teams are planning, they look at the last however many years, and every year the salary

cap has gone up by a pretty decent margin. So when you're planning before this pandemic it's and everything changes, you're kind of expecting that again. So it would have gone from maybe to ten or something, so it could be as many as thirty million less than one a team expected a little over a year ago, um, And

so that's obviously gonna make things more difficult. And that's why I think you're gonna see a lot of teams having to do some restructuring this year, and probably it's a popular strategy, even more so than usual, because the basic concept of restructuring a guy's contract, which usually usually involves taking a salary that he's gonna get paid during that year and converting into into a bonus that he gets right then, and bonuses are then pro raded over

the remaining length of the contract. So you can take a guy given the same amount of money, but it makes much less of a cap hit this year, But you're kicking the can down the road and you're gonna take that cap hit at some point. But in this situation, with the cap going down this year and hopefully going back up next year and then maybe going back up by a lot in two, it kind of makes some sense to kick the can down the road a little

bit and try to spread out those those impacts. So I don't really have a good list of who the Bucks might do that with and don't really want to speculate, but in terms of you, you're looking for players who have um a high base salary this year and a structure that doesn't involve a lot of guaranteed money and dead cap hits. That's a that's a great point. Um Samuel asked, are we interested in J. J. Watt or is that outside of the capability with the cap? Yeah.

I mean the only way I could see that is if the Bucks didn't pursue in order we're able to keep guys like um Shack Barrett and Dom Kitsu. And I do believe that our focus is going to be on our guys first. And you know, Jason led and Mike Greenberg and Jackie Davidson and all them, they're going to get creative if they need to with contracts and and the salary cap and find a way to make it work. But that doesn't change the fact that there's

not a ton of wiggle room. The Bucks don't have a ton of wiggle room to start uh free agency, And if they're trying to get five of those guys back, it's gonna it's not gonna be easy. So it kind of makes it a very tight window to try to bring in a guy like J. J. Watt, who may not get exactly what he was supposed to get as a salary for the the Texans before they agreed to let him go, but he's probably still expecting a pretty

good payday. So and the other thing is you probably want to find out if you can get check and the dominicansuing those guys back before you would make a decision on a J. J. Watt, And by then he might have already signed with another team. And uh, Seth brought up what do you think happens with O. J. Howard?

So there's there's a lot we can talk about with O. J. That in terms of when we think he'll be healthy and what his contract situation is him Cam Gronk, you know how how that could look moving forward, do we do we have all of them, keep all of them just kind of overall? What do you see is how O J. Howard would affect whatever that position group is going to look like. Well, the first thing to keep in mind is the Buccaneers did pick up his defier option.

They had to make that decision last year, before his fourth season, and they did. Uh and to me, you know, in conscious to say contract contract, asked to say like a Vernon Hargraves, where they didn't picking up O J's contract for the fifth year, which doesn't mean they have to keep him. It just guaranteed it for injury. You can still release or wave of Oji hard if you

want to. I'm not suggedisting that would happened. But my point being, they did pick up that option, and they had at that point, I believe, already traded for Rob Gronkowski, so they still saw the value in having both of those guys. I thought in the early part of last season it looked really good having Gronk and o J. Together. It looked to me like OJ was gonna have a big year until he had the Achilles injury. Now, the

fact that he had the injury in Week four. It was devastating at the time, and we all felt terrible for him, but at least it was early in the season, which meant he could immediately have the surgery and start his rehab and hopefully be ready for the start of the season, because that's a pretty and achilles injury to kill.

His tendon injury is a tough one to come back from takes a while, So I think he should be ready to go, And I think that the Bucklers would like to see what he and Gronk could do on the field together over a longer term. And then do you feel like with Cam rate and what we saw this year with him, you know how that affects do

we do? Are all three of them? You know, people we want to have back and against salary cap situations of just you know, keeping everybody is that is at a group where you feel like a lot of people. Of course, last year we're speculating about trading one of them because it was such a just insane amount of riches at that one position. But then of course we saw that one guy gets hurt, and boy, you really needed both Cam and Gronk for that Super Bowl run. Yeah,

I think that's your final point. There is probably where I would have started. It does, though you do have to factor in the salaries. I mean, Cam is making a pretty good salary. Um, Gronkowski would probably be making a pretty good salary if he signs again for say one year. O J's fifth year contract option does bump up his his rookie salary quite a bit, so you would be devoting a lot of salary to that position.

And like we said, it is tight, so I guess it depends on how tight it becomes if the Buccaneers can afford to keep all free. But personally, I think the the first option when you're when you're trying. Basically, the Buccaneers are gonna be in the same mode starting this season as they were last year when it was clear that they were all in. I think that they're going to be all in as much as they can to try to win it again this year because they've got the team to do it if they can keep

it together. Absolutely, and Francisco had asked, do you see us trading up for anyone in this draft class? Or they're going to be people or positions that would be worth moving up from thirty two? I would be much more. I think it'd be much more likely that the Bucks would trade down. And you know, I read an interesting

piece and it's not my original thought. I think it might have been Bill Barnwall of ESPN, but was pointing out that, UM, in this uncertain year, when you don't have a combine and you don't have as many games during the season, you have a bunch of players that are top prospects, so even opted out of the season, so the last tape you have of them is two thousand nineteen. Um, it makes you feel like draft picks

are a lot more uncertain. So you know, probably the best idea is to have as many of them as possible, because the draft is always a crapshoot, but this year it's even a little bit harder to be sure of a guy. So the more chances you have at it, the better chance you have of hitting on some of those draft picks. So UM, you know, some teams will probably look at it the other way and say, because it's more uncertain, I want to move up and get

one of the the top prospects. But I kind of agree with the other idea that UM, with the even greater uncertainty, the best approaches to have as many picks as possible. Yeah, I think I would agree with that. Um Austin said, I know Brady is returning this next year, but at what point do we start thinking about QB life after Brady. I think what you do is, if you're Jason Light and Bruce Arians is you keep your you keep your eyes open, and you're ready to make

a move anytime one makes sense. But I don't think it becomes the top priority yet, particularly when um, when uh Jason Light goes on the on the uh Rich Eyes and Show and says, Tom Brady's you know there's a potential interest and extension, so we may be talking a couple of years down the road. So also picking thirty second in every round, you know, it's not necessarily

conducive to getting UH top blue chip prospect. And you know, how long if you're going to get a guy nowadays in the NFL, how long if you take a quarterback that's you want to be your quarterback in the future, how long do you really want him to sit on

the bench? Right It seems to me to make more sense to continue to right now at least to have veteran backups to Tom Brady all right, And then we had a question of from Jasper about what do you think would be the best position to draft for this year? And of course there's a few different ways you can take that in terms of just the strength of the draft or the highest need for the Bucks. So if you can either pick one of those or both of

those would are they the same? Are different? In your mind? Well, the need, the biggest need for the Buccaneers is probably going to be determined by what happens in the next few weeks and months in free agency. So if you lose Jack Barrett, I think it's pretty clear that edge rusher is probably your biggest need, because this is not a roster with a lot of glaring needs. If you can't if you could assume the return of all of these guys, there isn't a position where the Buccaneers are

really really lacking him. Last year was very very clear that they needed another offensive tackle. We all knew that, we mocked it in every single draft and they made sure it happened. This year, not so much. And like for instance, the entire offensive line is is signed for next year, so starting line that is so uh that

Or if you were to losing Dominican sue. Um, you know, maybe some interior line depths would make a lot of sense, you know, because also Nacho and Steve McClinton are free agents, So depending on what happens with all those guys, I think those two positions could end up being the biggest needs just in terms of numbers. All right, well, that is going to do it for us on this edition

of Buccaneers Insider Live presented by Miller Lite. Thanks as always for joining us and for those amazing questions, and we'll be back here next week.