Now that Tom Brady has officially retired from the NFL, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have been provided with some offseason clarity.
Brady’s decision loomed large over what path the Bucs would go down as the team tries to repair the damage caused by last season’s implosion. Tampa Bay was already looking at a dire salary cap situation, and Brady was the linchpin to a number of different roster decisions that need to be made.
The Bucs are roughly $50 million over the cap heading into an offseason where the team will need to find a new quarterback, decide which veterans to let go, and how to fill positional needs with little cash and almost zero reputational credibility.
It’s a pretty bleak situation on the surface, there’s no way of sugarcoating it. There’s still time to figure everything out, though, so let’s dive into some knee-jerk reactions about what happens next now that the Bucs are officially entering a Post-Brady era.
Tampa Bay has a lot to sort out but the first key areas are:
- Does the team enter a rebuild or try to compete?
- What’s the situation at quarterback?
- What happens to the coaching staff?
Do the Buccaneers blow it up or run it back?
With Brady’s decision final, the next decision this offseason hinges on is how serious the Buccaneers are about contending next season. With the massive salary cap obstacle to get around, the Bucs are at a fork-in-the-road situation: Blow it up and rebuild, or try to run it back.
Blowing it up is probably the best option for the long term. Tampa Bay is in this financial predicament primarily because it kept deferring the bill it needed to pay for winning the Super Bowl. Running it back in 2021 meant mortgaging part of the future and that time has now arrived. A total teardown would get the Bucs clear of any salary cap tension, but would also mean trading guys like Mike Evans and Chris Godwin for draft capital. This puts the team in a position to see what it has out of its younger core pieces and might allow them to draft foundational franchise players in 2024.
It’s a smart thing for the team to do but is the type of surrender franchises never perform on main. Such a thing is also incredibly unfair to the coaching staff, who should be allowed to seek other jobs if the team isn’t serious about contending next year.
All teams are serious about contending, though, even the bad ones. The Bucs will likely attempt to strike a happy medium where the team gets under the cap, keeps its star players, and tries to make the best of what next season holds.
What happens at quarterback for Buccaneers?
The first step is the most complicated — and most important — as the Bucs must figure out what to do at quarterback.
There was an outside chance Brady returned for a fourth season in Tampa Bay but with that option off the table, the Bucs have a few different routes they can go. One thing that seems clear is that the team doesn’t have its quarterback of the future on the roster right now. There was no succession plan set in place for when Brady retired and that bill has come due in a pretty significant way.
Option 1: Bring back Blaine Gabbert
For all three of Brady’s seasons in Tampa Bay, Blaine Gabbert was his partner in crime. The former first-round pick backed Brady up and was his sounding board in the quarterback room, and the Bucs could turn to him to lead the team next season.
It’s certainly the least sexy of the options and doesn’t help make Tampa Bay into Super Bowl contender, but it’s perhaps the easiest transition away from Brady. Gabbert knows the offense, has continuity with guys like Mike Evans and Chris Godwin,
Option 2: Start Kyle Trask and see what he’s got
This is somewhere in that happy medium of making the most of a bad situation and trying to be competitive. Trask has barely played at all since being drafted, but the Bucs used a second-round pick on him for a reason. He was sort of the succession plan for when Brady retired, but it’s unclear what Tampa Bay has in him and whether he has to the tools worth investing in over potentially looking at future draft classes.
Stating Trask in 2023 and giving him a full season of work is the best way to see what he has to offer. He doesn’t need to be Brock Purdy, but the Bucs need to see if he is a legitimate option to be a franchise quarterback. There’s only one way to find out.
Option 3: Draft a quarterback this spring
This is sort of a two-part option, as the Bucs drafting a quarterback seems like a certainty. What isn’t known is when the team will decide to take a swing on the next attempt to find a franchise quarterback.
Jason Licht’s first swing was Jameis Winston, which didn’t work out. Brady fell into his lap and produced a Super Bowl victory. Might the third time be even more of a charm?
Logic would suggest the Bucs wait until 2024 to find a quarterback. This year’s class is extremely top-heavy and laden with potential duds. It’s widely assumed that the Bucs will be one of the worst teams in the league next season, which puts them in the conversation to draft USC’s Caleb Williams in next year’s draft. That’s the most ideal situation fans can hope for — which also highlights how bleak things are if tanking is the most exciting thing the team can do.
Option 4: Acquire a veteran quarterback
Derek Carr and Jimmy Garropolo are two names that have been kicked around NFL Rumors circles as of late, and both could be fits for the Bucs. If Tampa Bay isn’t ready to rebuild, going after a veteran on the market is what the team will have to do in order to remain competitive.
Money is an issue for the Buccaneers, though, which likely takes this option off the board. Tampa Bay already needs to make some serious decisions to get back under the cap and that’s before salary is added back. Signing Carr or Garoppolo would mean needing to retain key pieces of the roster that might otherwise be cap casualties, which doesn’t fix the problem.
Both quarterbacks will likely want big money free agent deals, something the Bucs might not be able to afford. Going after Carr or Garoppolo is a commitment to the future, not a one-for-one Brady replacement to go chasing another Super Bowl in the short term.
What happens to the Buccaneers coaching staff?
There’s also the matter of what impact Brady retiring has on the coaching staff. Before he made his announcement, the Bucs were already starting to make changes to Todd Bowles staff but how those roles get replaced has likely changed.
Most immediately affected is the search for a new offensive coordinator. There were rumblings that Kellen Moore would be pursued, but he quickly took a job with the Los Angeles Chargers. Todd Monken has been interviewed for the position, as has Keenan McCardell, Klint Kubiak, and Jim Bob Cooter.
Brady retiring might open the door for Monken to return to Tampa Bay. He knows the most important parts of the offense from his first stint with the team and could get the most out of Kyle Trask if he’s chosen to be the starter in 2023. Monken could be playing with house money, too. If the coaching staff is gutted next offseason, Monken will have spent a season letting other teams watch him cook before auditioning for another job elsewhere in the league. It’s essentially what he did the last time he was in Tampa, helping Jameis Winston throw for what felt like a billion yards per game before parlaying that into two National Championships at Georgia.
That’s the other point as the elephant in the room is the longevity of the current staff, as it’s now tremendously unclear what the future holds for Bowles. He was already on the hot seat after what happened this past season, but he’s now backed into a corner with Brady retiring. The Bucs will look very different in 2023, and it’s a matter of whether ownership wants to build the team back in Bowles’ vision or if he’s scapegoated after a losing season.
This is assuming the team regresses next year, which seems entirely possible. Logic would suggest that if the team looked as dull as it did in Brady’s last year, it’s probably going to be even worse without him and some key players who might not be back as well.
Bowles has proved in the past that he can turn things around — just look at the something he made out of nothing during his time with the New York Jets. He has a long-term deal with the team, but coaching contracts are basically fairy dust to owners, and the pressure will be on for him to prove he’s the right coach to successfully lead the franchise through choppy waters and into an uncertain future.