The Buccaneers need to spend some time planning for a future after Tom Brady. They need to start with the following, attainable plan.
The Buccaneers and Tom Brady won’t be married forever. A change is going to come. It may not be now, but there is a future that is quickly approaching in Tampa that won’t have the greatest quarterback of all time throwing passes to players in pewter and red.
When that day comes, the Bucs would be wise to have a plan in place that has the team back in contention as soon as possible.
That is the first truth Buccaneers fans have to accept; the team won’t be nearly as good in the immediate aftermath of Brady’s final retirement. There will be a slump. You always have to pay up at some point, and the Bucs have been pushing their financial burden into the future for a while.
To offset both issues, the Buccaneers need to find a quality bridge quarterback that won’t break the bank while also taking another shot at their future.
This would be accomplished by signing upcoming free agent Jacoby Brissett and then drafting Anthony Richardson.
For the bridge quarterback, the Bucs don’t have a long list of guys they can afford. At this point, you can either stick with Blaine Gabbert, or you can peruse the market and take a guy like Brissett, Jared Goff, Baker Mayfield, or the like.
Brissett is coming off the best season of the bunch and should be in an affordable spot for Tampa. It also works that the Bucs have an offense that is very similar to what Brissett has seen during his career.
While a good player that deserves a shot with one team, it would be fair to say that Brissett is not a long-term option, but he would be a decent option to keep the Bucs semi-competitive after Brady (as seen by his performance with the Browns). That is why the Bucs should take another chance on a draft pick.
This isn’t to say that Kyle Trask is done in Tampa, but it is also fair to say that he hasn’t done much to convincingly win the job of the future either. More bodies will lead to more chances to hit on a franchise leader.
Despite his poor accuracy in college and a weak end to his career as a Gator, Anthony Richardson has more tools than any other quarterback in the class and should be available when the Bucs are picking.
There aren’t many other rookie quarterbacks worth looking at for Tampa based on current projections. Richardson may not be it, but taking a shot on another Josh Allen-type talent is far from a bad gamble for Tampa when the new game becomes ‘how fast can we find a franchise quarterback?’
There aren’t a lot of great options for the Bucs when Tom Brady does finally retire, but having some semblance of a plan in place helps.
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