Breaking: Buccaneers Set To Sign $16 million Pro Bowl Edge Rusher
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers surprised many by winning the NFC South for a third-straight season and then impressed even more by making it to the Divisional Round of the NFL Playoffs.
Quarterback Baker Mayfield’s career revival paired with receiver Mike Evans’ record-extending 10th-straight 1,000-yard receiving season contributed greatly to the perceived overachievement, but so too did coach Todd Bowles’s defense.
Bowles’s Bucs defense allowed the 7th fewest points allowed per game while the offense averaged 20.5, and while there are certainly areas to look at for improving the unit, it stood tall for much of the season.
Now, there is speculation that players like outside linebacker Shaquil Barrett could find themselves left off the 2024 roster as a result of the business side of the NFL.
However, there is one name that has suddenly come available who could help boost the Buccaneers defense to an even higher status next year – Eagles linebacker Haason Reddick.
Let’s acknowledge up front that Tampa Bay adding Reddick, who has requested and been granted permission to seek a trade, would be complicated to achieve.
But, let’s also understand it’s not impossible to make happen despite the Eagles star carrying a nearly $16 million cap hit post-trade to the Bucs this offseason.
While Tampa Bay currently carries just under $38 million in projected cap space next season simple restructures of defensive tackle Vita Vea and cornerback Jamel Dean’s contracts provide the potential to add nearly $19 million alone, according to Over The Cap.
That makes Reddick’s contract easier to absorb while designating Barrett as a post-June 1st release leaves the Bucs with $46 million to re-sign Mayfield, Evans, safety Antoine Winfield, and potentially linebackers Lavonte David and/or Devin White depending on what the players and team decide to do with those multi-layered situations.
Additionally, Reddick is going to want an extension in the process of finding a new team as 2024 is his last non-void year on his current deal.
The linebacker turns 30 in September and is coming off his second-straight Pro Bowl season while securing double-digit sacks in each of the last four years while playing for the Arizona Cardinals and Carolina Panthers before joining the Eagles in 2022.
He’s also played in every regular season game of his career since joining the NFL as a 1st-round pick of the Cardinals in 2017 coming out of Temple. The same Temple where Bruce Arians got his first head coaching job, produced eight staff members on the latest Tampa Bay Super Bowl team, and where Bowles played defensive back under Arians in the mid-1980s.
Buccaneers fans have a major rooting interest in Super Bowl 58
Even though the Bucs aren’t playing, there’s still a reason for fans to be deeply invested.
Super Bowl 58 is here, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are very obviously not playing in the game. The season ended in the NFC Divisional Round, which was much later than most experts thought things would wrap up.
A team picked to win just a handful of games clinched a third straight division title and punched a ticket to the playoffs for a fourth consecutive year. It was a magical season that not a single Bucs fans should be taking for granted given the pit of football hell the team climbed out of after the last decade.
The last time the Bucs were this consistently good was back in the early 2000s, which is connective tissue with this year’s Super Bowl. While Tampa Bay isn’t in the Super Bowl this year, fans don’t have to look hard to find some rooting interest.
Buccaneers fans should be rooting for John Lynch in Super Bowl 58
John Lynch was part of that first Super Bowl team and made his bones as the hardest hitting safety in the NFL at the backend of a legendary Buccaneers defense. His post-playing days have been almost as successful, taking over the general manager job in San Francisco and building a 49ers team that has shades of his old Tampa Bay teams while correcting one of its biggest flaws.
Kyle Shanahan deserves all of the credit for the Niners insane offensive production, but it’s hard to not see how bad Lynch’s offenses were in Tampa Bay and not think that he was very intentional about not re-living the same mistakes.
For his effort in building the Niners, Lynch could end up with the second Super Bowl ring of his career. He’s already a Hall of Famer and has a ring from that 2002 Bucs team, so winning another one is just icing on the cake.
It’s also a reason for Buccaneers fans to be invested in tonight’s game.
Lynch was one of the most likable players of that era, joining Ronde Barber in being an incredibly nice person off the field who wouldn’t think twice about crunching your bones on it. He’s taken that mentality to the 49ers front office, and it’s impossible to see him this close to further solidifying his legacy and not be in his corner.
Tampa Bay might not be in the Super Bowl, but an all-time franchise icon is. It’s the perfect reason to get some skin in the game and pull for Lynch.
