Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Offseason plan to make the playoffs

With the 2020 NFL Combine over, here is the full plan for what the Buccaneers should do at the 2020 NFL Draft and in free agency.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have many big decisions to make this offseason between the draft and numerous free agent determinations.

This plan will include free agency, potential trades, and will end with a mock draft that addresses the needs of the team that remain.

The biggest goal of this plan is to make the playoffs in 2020 as the Bucs weren’t that far off despite a defense that took a while to get going and far too many turnovers. Correctly handling this offseason would give the team the best chance of winning in the future.

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Trade options:

The Buccaneers only have two viable trade options. The first choice would be to trade away Cameron Brate for cap relief while the second option would be to trade O.J. Howard away for draft capital.

Either of these trades would work to the benefit of the Buccaneers as the team has two talented tight ends but could find numerous trade partners for these successful players while replacing either player in the draft.

The Bucs would get less compensation for Cameron Brate but would save far more money while they would get more draft capital for Howard but saving less money overall.

For the sake of this plan, the Bucs will keep the tight end with the higher ceiling in the form of O.J. Howard while looking to replace Cameron Brate in one of the middle rounds of the draft.

The Bucs would save a little less than $6,000,000 depending on which round they draft a replacement in. The Bucs would likely look for a new tight end in one of the middle rounds and wouldn’t have to shell out to sign the rookie, making this an efficient trade.

While Brate could potentially bring in a fourth-round pick, a conservative estimate would say that the Bucs would get a fifth-round pick in trading away the veteran tight end and that will come up in the later mock draft.