Should Buccaneers Have Traded Glennon When They Had The Chance?
By Bailey Adams
With NFL free agency getting underway in less than a month, the Buccaneers are about to see their 2013 third-round pick, quarterback Mike Glennon, walk out the door. He’ll be leaving with little-to-nothing coming to Tampa Bay in return. The question is: should the Bucs have pulled the trigger on a Glennon trade when they had the chance?
When the Buccaneers selected Jameis Winston with the first overall pick in the 2015 NFL Draft, the questions started almost immediately. Where will Tampa Bay send Mike Glennon? What can they get in return? When should they ship him away? Those questions and rumors flew around throughout that year, through the following offseason and through this past season. Yet, the Bucs didn’t pull the trigger. Now, Glennon will leave in free agency and they’ll potentially get nothing.
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Look, hindsight is a frustrating thing. But even still, no one can help feeling that it’s wrong that Tampa Bay won’t get much of anything in return for someone who could go out and sign for as much as $15 million per year. The common excuse that the team used for keeping him made sense, right? Glennon was a solid quarterback and if for whatever reason he was needed, coaches would be comfortable with him stepping in. He was thought to be one of the better backup options in the league. However, if that was the only justification to keep him, that just doesn’t feel like enough.
The reality is, there were plenty of times when the Bucs could have traded the 2013 third-rounder. He did a solid job in relief during his first two seasons, but didn’t see the field much in 2016. The interest in him was clear, but Tampa Bay decided not to take advantage of it. Maybe general manager Jason Licht didn’t get any offers that he liked. But even if that was the case, wouldn’t something have been better than nothing?
Winston managed to stay healthy through the first two years of his career, meaning that the backup job was just mop-up duty. Ryan Griffin, who the team seems to like, or a different free agent could’ve stepped into that role just fine in 2016. Tampa Bay obviously couldn’t bank on Winston staying completely injury-free, but keeping Glennon was just too safe. Had No. 3 gone down, would the team really have remained a contender with Glennon under center? He was a good insurance policy, but not someone that would’ve gotten the Bucs anywhere significant.
Tampa Bay was essentially a few players away from making the playoffs this season. Was it possible that Glennon could’ve been the piece that brought those players in? Maybe. But the team surely wasn’t going to be any closer to the playoffs because they had a good backup quarterback.
The point of this debate certainly isn’t to say whether or not Glennon is a worthless player. The point is that he’s a player with worth, yet the Bucs let him get away without cashing in on that worth. Again, this seems easy to say in hindsight, but it’s a shame that the team didn’t pull the trigger on a deal when they had the opportunity.
The best case scenario is that the Bucs receive a compensatory pick for him, but even that isn’t a guarantee. At most they’ll receive a mid-round pick in 2018 when they likely could’ve gotten at least that in 2016 to find this team another piece that would’ve helped then, not two years later.
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I believe that I speak for the entire staff here at The Pewter Plank when I say this: we wish Mike Glennon the best of luck wherever he ends up (except for when he plays against the Bucs). What do you think, Bucs fans? Do you think the team was right to hold on to No. 8? Let us know in the comments or on social media.