Who Will Re-Sign with the Bucs Following Brady's Return? | Bucs Insider

chill Sunday there for a while. Yeah. Why did we think that was an option in the middle of Marge, I don't know. And so here it is. This is his message that he sent out saying that he is officially coming back. So we are here to talk about what that means for this franchise, aside from the fact of a lot of excitement for Bucks fans, the Bucks organization. I mean, we have just seen the impact he has

had on this team, on this city. So first I'd love to hear your reaction to seeing that he was back in your chill Sunday, What that was like to see that he was officially that had to be the biggest, absolute lack of roster move that the franchise has ever had, because there really was no move when he elected to retire about a month and a half ago. He didn't we didn't actually make a roster move, thank goodness, and so there was no move to make, yes Orday either,

it was just, uh, he's back, and yeah, I was surprised. Um, there wasn't really any morning, but it was. It was. It was nice. It was you know, sometimes you get a little piece of news that he didn't see coming and it's good news. I mean it was. It was an exciting Sunday, that's for sure. It was going to be much more exciting going forward now as well. Yes, which, speaking of that, that is largely what we're here to

talk about, because we know everybody knows he's back. So now we're going to discuss what that means to this franchise moving forward. And so let's talk about the timing of his announcement and how well that works for the organization and what that is going to mean for Yeah, well, in about two hours, the legal tampering period as they call it, will start, and that's when teams can start

talking to free ages of teams. But even before that, the Buccaneers have been able to talk to their own free agents, so we all we all obviously already know Chris Godman is coming back on the franchise Dagger possibly

if they can get it done a long term deal. Uh, there's nothing official otherwise, but we did obviously see reports that perhaps Ryan Jensen is going to resign, which would be incredible news because basically that's saying two Pro bowlers who you might have been without are now hopefully coming back, definitely in Tom Brady's case, and and we may have news on Ryan Jensen at some point, and there's been nothing official from the team yet, but I think you

can see how that would impact the decisions of all those guys. And there's still another twenty one unrestricted free agents to deal with in a couple of restricted free agents, so there's a lot of work to potentially get done. But I gotta believe, I mean, this isn't rocket science. If Tom Brady's coming back, that would make it more likely that a lot of these guys would choose to come back as well. The most obvious one probably that

everybody's thinking. The first connection you're gonna make is Rob Gronkowski, Right there is Rob Gronkowski would seem much more likely to come back to play with Brady just like he did two years ago. Yeah, and everything talked about Brady's recruiting ability, the power of Brady to make guys want to come play with him, want to be on the team.

So when free agency is all about selling people to and especially to get them to sign for things that let you have the salary cap room, and so what do you feel like are some of the priorities now of and even just the strategy of free agency when it was are we able to do all these things under the cap room? Are we rebuilding? Are we not?

And now knowing and I know that we have a statement from Jason Light that he put out as well talking about their ideas here and so he is obviously saying that you know now they're trying to reload this roster for another championship run. Is the end of that statement, And what do you think that is going to mean in terms of the priorities of who they try to bring back, how they try to do that in our

our salary cap situation. Yeah, to me, the other than the actual I'm coming back from Tom Brady, the best quote the Night is the less sentence there on Jason Light's statement, Um, you see that. You don't see the

word rebuild there, You see reload. And I had wondered going into the start of free agency if we would see from the moves the Buccaneers were making how they were going to approach this season considering you thought you didn't have Tom Brady, and that makes a really big question mark at the most important position on the field. You don't know if you can get another player that's gonna be so impactful and can make so much out

of this offense. You just don't know. I mean, it could have possibly happened, but now you don't have to worry about that anymore. So I thought the roster moves might tell us whether the Buccaneers were going to actually go into rebuild, even if they don't want to say that word. Now it's pretty obvious it's reload, right And uh, and we haven't seen a ton, but we've seen the franchise tag on Chris Godwin, which is a move that

I would say is pretty aggressively going for it right. Um, and and maybe Ryan Jensen returning would be a pretty aggressive going forward type of move as well. Maybe if Rob Gronkowski chooses to return now because of Tom Brady, But I think it's all amped up by huge amount the fact that we know Tom Brady is gonna be back. I mean to me that that sets the direction for

the franchise for this coming season. When headed into free agency, I wasn't sure which way they were going to go, right, and so now that we do know Tom Brady is back, looking at not only free agency but also the draft, it is the biggest priorities of We've talked a lot about who we're going to resign, but maybe who you're also trying to get outside of that, or some of the positions that now become potentially even more important. What do you see as the biggest priorities of what you

are not only keeping but potentially adding to this team. Well, I would be surprised if there are very many like high profile editions, just because the Buccaneers are in the exact same position they've been in the last two years, when the priority was clearly getting back as many of your own free agency as possible, because that's a lot of really good players on that list, and there are always ways to make caproman We've already seen the Buccaneers do a little bit of that with the vella this

in the past few weeks. But um, you still there is a finite amount at some point, and I think their first priority, just as it was each of the last two years, will be to keep their own players of this championship corps intact. And you saw like the last couple of years there was one or two editions like Giovanni Bernard last year, Um, but mostly was keeping

your own guys. Uh. I would say the biggest questions are probably the offensive line, because um, Jason Lane and Bruce Arians made it clear at the combine a couple weeks ago that maintaining a dominant offensive line is a top priority. And that's not easy when your left guard is retired and your right guard and your center are both potential unrestricted free agents. Uh So I would think that is still and we resigned here and sent steady by way, so that helps. So you could see movement.

They're trying to keep that offensive line intact. And then what are you gonna do in the backfield since Leonard Fournette and Ronald Jones are both unrestricted free agents. Obviously we saw how well Leonard Fournette has fit into this offense with Tom Brady and company, but he may be looking for a long term deal or a bigger deal somewhere else. So how are they going to resolve was going on in the backfield? And then obviously the offensive line.

With the offensive line, it's been funny to see people wondering if Ali Marpett was going to come out of retirement, but I think apparently not. It seems like he actually is retired. I know that, uh we we hope that maybe it just meant that those words didn't mean anything to anybody. And now that Brady's back in the tire, Ki could just come back. So um, yeah, with Aaron

Stinney resigning. Overall, what do you think of the draft with an offensive lineman and where the Bucks are drafting, how much of a benefit that could be where they're picking and the the type of guy. Is it a first round choice? Is it in around the second or third rounder? Yeah. The last week's mock draft, when I did I actually gave the Buckaneers Zion Johnson from Boston College and it just seemed like there was good value there at the end of the first round with a

couple of interior offensive lineman. But on the other hand, as I mentioned in that article, Jason Light and company have shown that they can find starting offensive linemen in the second and third round. They kind of had to

move around a little bit to do it. I think they traded up for both Alan mark Pett and Alex Cappa, but they found and Diamond Smith was the second rounder as well, though a high second runner, they have been able to find starting an immediate almost in Alan mar Pett and Diamond Smith's case, immediate starters in the second and third round. So, um, you don't absolutely have to

devote your first round pick to that. And uh, I think there are other positions that will show some value there late in the first round, including cornerback and wide receiver.

So there's a lot of ways the Buccaneers can go and maybe maybe they won't be so desperate for an offensive lineman if the reports and Ryan Jenson are true, and if they can get Alex Cappa back, because with Aaron Stinney, you hope that he can step right in and left guard and play as well as he did uh in the playoffs in when the Buckners were on the way to the Super Bowl, Okay, all right. We had a couple of Facebook questions that I'll get to here.

Um Asher wanted to know, do you think the reconstruction of Vita Vea was freeing up money to sign for net You know, I never really connected the dots directly between the fact that they're freeing up money for the starter free agency and on specific free agent, but that does make some sense. Yeah, It's just running back contracts are tricky because they're tricky to speculate about because you just don't know which There's a lot of teams I think don't want to spend a lot of money on

running backs. I don't know if the Buccaneers are in that position or not. Um, you know, this is a team that throws the ball probably almost like two thirds of the time, and they, like a Brutalians, wants to have a balance offense. But that more means a running game that that you're worried about if you're the other team, That at least is something that makes the other team have to concentrate on. That doesn't mean we're gonna run the ball at the time. It just means you have

an effective running game when you need to. So does that diminish the value of running back or do you look at Leonard for for NET over the past two seasons, including especially including the post season and most of the last year and go, well, this guy, maybe it's a little bit better than than what you can find just on the street elsewhere, or how you think key Shan Bond can fill that role. So I think it's a

little bit tricky. I don't know if that move was made specifically for Leonard for NET, but it was obviously made to be able to retain some of these guys, right, And is that an area to where knowing Brady's back, the type of running back that works well with him, that he likes to work with, that does that also change either the desire to bring back for Nett or or Ronald Jones or even just who you would be looking at otherwise that it's one thing to just know, Okay,

we want a running back, but the type of running back that you know works well in a Tom Brady let off, I would think maybe even a smaller or a different way to look at it would be Tom Brady's back. And I think it's probably fair to say that Tom Brady's input has had an effect on the Buck's decisions on offense over the last couple of years. So will Tom Brady's return and will he start having

input again? I would think so. And if Tom Brady really wants to learn four net back, I think that would be you know, a big impetus for for the Buccaneers to try to bring him back. All right, So our next question is from Richard here, and he said, with Brady coming back, how does that affect our salary caps? So we talked about the idea of what it means for a salary cap of all the other people you're gonna try to now bring back, but how about him individually?

You mentioned that they had not made any roster moves and so what does his impact on the salary cap mean for this year? Well, it doesn't change anything at the moment because there was no roster move, so I guess they were they wouldn't. One of the reasons that the Buccaneers were not didn't immediately make a move and put them on reserve, retired or something like that, is you just you wanted to let to play out and see what the best way was to handle the roster

move in terms of the salary cap impact. You know, would you would you make him, would you make the move after June one? That kind of thing to spread the impact over two years. Um, So the salary cap didn't change at all because there was no roster move. And you have to remember that Tom Brady, for being a top three quarterback in the NFL, the salary that he's making is incredibly, almost insanely good value for the Buccaneers.

So um, I'm not sure exactly. I I don't think that his decision to retire hurts the Buckaners in terms of the salary cap, but in the bigger picture, the amount of the salary cap that he's taking up to be a top three quarterback in the NFL is is a value, all right. And our next one here is from Jamie who said, do you think we get a long term deal done with Godwin soon? So how does this resigning of Brady or Brady coming back affect the idea of god when being on the franchise tag verse

long term? I think so, I really, honestly, it's just a hunch, but the the salary cap impact of the franchise tag is about nineteen point two million, just period. That's what it is. Next year. But if you do a long term deal and you know, Mike Williams, for instance, for the Charges recently got six or three years, sixty

millions like twenty million a year. Seems like that would be a starting point for Chris god when I'm not a an agent or a salary negotiator, but it's just common sense, right, But you can structure that deal so that the salary cap hit for the first year is less than that. So if you can work out a long term deal with Chris Godwin, you can actually he can actually make more but have less of a salary

cap hit this year. And since this is this could be Tom Brady's last year, right, this is definitely a go, all in go for a year, and you would probably want to push off some of the salary cap hit into later years when the salary cap is probably gonna grow and it would be easier to fit it anyway. So signing Chris Godwin to a long term deal is almost certainly going to help the Bucks in terms of salary cap now, which is obviously great motivation for the

team to get it done. So does Chris Godwin want to do a long term deal with the Buccaneers? My guests is yes, I'm not you know, at home with Chris Godwen. I don't know how he really feels, but my guess is that he would like to stay here, particularly Tom Brady returning right, So my my hunch is that they will get a long term deal done done with Chris Godwin this year. Um, if you remember last year, he actually signed the franchise tag just about eight days

after getting it. I mean he pretty quickly he was, he signed it, So we'll see if he does that then obviously he's intending to play it out and hit for next year. But if you don't see that happening quickly, then that's probably be as signed. They're trying to get working on that deal, all right, Well that is going to do it for us. On this special edition of Buccaneers Insider Live presented by Miller Lite, we are so

excited about a return of Tom Brady. Thank you all for watching, and of course this kicks off a very exciting week of free agency, so make sure you stay tuned to Buccaneers dot com for all of our coverage of that