Tom Brady hasn’t been retired a month yet and already there are murmurs in the sports ether: the Bucs should tank the 2023 season. It is an all-too common pattern. A NFL team loses their star quarterback, so it’s time to tear it all down.
However, back in the real world, the Bucs are preparing to do anything but tank. In fact, they are not in a great position to have the massive sell-off of assets typically associated with tanking.
Yes, the Bucs are $56 million over the 2023 salary cap, thanks to cap moves made to extend their Super Bowl window. This massive cap bill is actually a major reason why a sell-off cannot happen.
In order to keep the championship window open, the Bucs borrowed significant capital against future years, restructuring salaries into bonuses and adding void years on numerous contracts. In addition to squeezing Tampa’s cap space, this created a massive reserve of potential dead money which, when the notion of trading players is broached, comes with deal-killing consequences.
Take wide receiver Mike Evans for example. He is currently making most “most likely to be dealt” lists in NFL media, which does not make much sense considering the Bucs would eat $21.4 million in dead cap in 2023 while saving just $2.3 million.
This is the case with many of the Bucs’ highest-paid players. Trading WR Chris Godwin, linebacker Shaq Barrett, defensive tackle Vita Vea or center Ryan Jensen would each incur a minimum of $10 million in dead money hits against the 2023 salary cap.
In fact, trading or cutting the Bucs top-10 highest paid players would get the Bucs to just $9.8 million under the salary cap, leaving Tampa without its top three wide receivers, three-fifths of the offensive line, its best defensive lineman, its best pass rusher, its only starting cornerback.
This isn’t going to happen. Instead, the only sensible option is to extend and restructure many of Tampa’s most expensive contracts. Evans is the most likely to be extended as the longest tenured player on offense and easily the most consistent and reliable, notching his ninth consecutive 1000-yard season.
Guard Shaq Mason could also be extended. He was the Bucs’ only offensive lineman to play every snap in 2022 and was second only to All-Pro Tristan Wirfs in the quality and consistency of his play.
Barrett and Vea are obvious candidates for restructures. Barrett is coming off an Achilles tear, making him a weak trade candidate, and his $21 million cap hit has to be addressed in order for Tampa to get under the 2023 cap before the start of the league year. Vita Vea’s $15 million cap number is relatively modest, but as the only player under contract past 2024, spreading some of his salary around is elementary.
Vea’s contract is representative of the Bucs’ long-term roster planning. With only one veteran set to be a Buccaneer beyond 2024, general manager Jason Licht and the front office are hedging their bets on the current roster for only another two years.
This gamble on the roster no doubt reflects the front office’s attitude towards head coach Todd Bowles. His first year as head coach did not inspire much confidence, a repeat of which would no doubt have consequences for the temperature of his chair.
However, the Bucs did not fire Todd Bowles this offseason. Hollowing out the roster while retaining him would do little more than delay his inevitable termination.
Instead, Bowles has been allowed to reset his staff, replacing offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich with Dave Canales. Leftwich’s termination was an implicit signal that the Bucs felt their struggles on offense in 2022 were not primarily of the roster’s making.
Finally, tanking’s primary intent is to maximize a team’s chances at acquiring elite personnel, namely by drafting a top quarterback prospect. This line of thinking assumes that a top-end quarterback should tip the scales of fortune of a franchise, more so than anything else on an NFL roster.
While elite quarterback play does ensure consistent competitive play from an NFL team, there is little evidence to suggest that tanking is the ideal method to acquire such a player. The Bucs’ own history with Jameis Winston is evidence of this.
In 2015, Winston joined a team largely bereft of talent and experience. The team was immediately placed on his shoulders, and he faltered under the weight.
Instead, teams with established talent and culture are far better environments for nurturing top quarterbacks. Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen and Jalen Hurts were all drafted by teams with winning records the previous season.
If the Bucs do have eyes on quarterbacks in either the 2023 or 2024 NFL draft, providing the strongest possible roster is more likely to yield success than bottoming out to secure a better draft position.
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