Buccaneers need to start being realistic with Ndamukong Suh
By Rob Leeds
The Buccaneers just spent their first pick of the draft on an interior lineman and have little money in cap space. Is Ndamukong Suh still a part the future?
The NFL is all about finding the best ways to bring cheap and young options onto a roster while also giving the team the best chance to win. This sometimes comes at the expense of veteran players, but the league is a business after all.
Teams like the Buccaneers might love their veteran core that helped them win a Super Bowl a few years back, but it is unrealistic to assume that the team will be able to keep the whole band together every season.
Difficult cuts have to come to keep fresh blood in and the cap space as high as possible, and that should lead to some difficult decisions regarding Ndamukong Suh.
Suh could still be back with the Bucs. Should he? That would be a different story.
The leader on the defensive line is older, not as cheap as you would think, and would only keep Tampa’s top draft pick from this class off the field longer than he needs to be.
The Bucs have some cap space opening up, presumably to reach a deal with Rob Gronkowski when the time is right, but it would be weird to take a chunk of this to give to a defender that is no longer a need.
The Bucs can go out and get a younger option with arguably more upside on the open market. This would give the team and Logan Hall a chance to build more chemistry as the Buccaneers try to figure out what they have in a new face, and moving on from Suh seems like the better money move.
Again, none of this is guaranteed, but even Greg Auman of the Athletic sees reasons why this move is not a total guarantee.
I said it was less likely than Gronk. I think I said “not necessarily likely” at one point.
— Greg Auman (@gregauman) May 7, 2022
Clearly this move is hard to foresee one way or another, but being this wishy-washy on a player like Suh this far into free agency is still telling to some degree.
It would be tough to imagine the Buccaneers without Suh as one of their leaders, but that is starting to look like a more likely scenario by the day as the team tries to figure out its identity under Todd Bowles.
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