To say this past season was a disappointment for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is to undersell just how terrible things went.
Sure, the team won the NFC South for a second consecutive season and hosted a playoff game. But a soft breeze crumbles that facade to show that the Bucs finished the season with a losing record, won a division that was universally acknowledged as the worst in all of football and got blown out in its one-and-done playoff appearance.
The offense was putrid, the defense could only do so much bending under pressure before it broke, and the team was a total shell of what it was the last two years. Winning the division and making the playoffs felt more like a participation trophy than anything else, which is made even more depressing by the fact that Tom Brady was leading the charge with a team that largely looked the same as it has.
Losing key members of the offensive line didn’t help and certainly put the Bucs in a tough spot. But the 2022 season was easily the most disappointing one in franchise history given the context.
Now the Bucs must find a way to move forward. Brady retired, Byron Leftwich was fired, and there is uncertainty about who will be here next season. Tampa Bay is roughly $55 million over the salary cap entering the offseason, and based on how last season went there are a handful of guys that need a fresh start somewhere else.
Not all of the decisions will be easy, but they’re going to have to be made.
Cameron Brate epitomizes how tough and deep some of the cuts might be. Injuries significantly bogged him down last year, including a terrifying neck injury that derailed his season midway through. He finished the season with less than 200 yards receiving, which is both way under his usual level of production but also a bad indicator of what he’s meant to the Bucs during his near-decade career with the team.
If this is the end for Brate, he’ll finish with as a Top 5 touchdown scorer in Buccaneers history and will be remembered as one of the warriors who helped get fans through some lean years. Crate not being back next year shouldn’t be an indictment of what he’s meant nor should it sour any of the memories he’s made in Tampa.
That being said, the future is now and Brate doesn’t appear to be a part of it for a few different reasons.
The emergence of Cade Otton is certainly a nail in Brate’s coffin. If the Bucs moved on, it would give Otton an even bigger role in the offense next year and allow him to continue his development as a TE1 for whoever rolls in as the franchise quarterback of the future.
Brate, as much as we love him, won’t be that guy.
Tampa Bay would also save about $2 million by moving on from Brate, which isn’t much but could go a long way when considering how creative the front office will need to be to get the team back under the cap.
We’ll always have Playoff Lenny, let’s never forget that.
However, it appears that Leonard Fournette’s days in a Bucs uniform are at an end. Much like Brate, losing Forunette is won’t bring a smile to many faces in Tampa Bay but he’s yet another guy who seems to be getting phased out as the team decides what sort of era it wants to enter.
There could be a case that Fournette should be brought back if the Bucs want to compete in 2023. He was the team’s leading rusher last season and when he’s firing on all cylinders is an absolute game-changing player to have on offense.
He’s also very expensive, to the point of potentially overpaying for what he brings to the offense. Much like saying the Bucs won the NFC South but whispering the part about having a losing record, Fournette was the leading rusher of the league’s worst rushing attack last season.
At his price point, which the Bucs would save about $3.5 million by cutting him, the Bucs can likely move on and give his reps to Rashaad White and Ke’Shawn Vaughn. White started emerging as a potential RB1 for the Bucs last season and Vaughn has sort of dwindled on the depth chart behind Fournette and White.
It’s a painful cut to make, but the Bucs have players to replace Fournette’s production at a fraction of the cost.
Surprisingly, moving on from Ryan Succop would actually save the Bucs more money than moving on from Leonard Fournette would (although not by much). Tampa Bay can save about $3.75 million by parting ways with its kicker while moving on from Lenny saves the team $3.5.
It’s not much, but it also goes a long way in highlighting how much of a no-brainer this move should be.
Succop will land on his feet, no pun intended. He’s one of the league’s most reliable kickers inside of 50 yards but he struggled to hit much beyond that range. He missed five kicks beyond 50 yards this season, and given how much the offense struggled to produce points, those misses were huge.
It’s completely unfair to blame Succop for the offensive’s stuntedness this year. However, looking around the league there are some big legs on good teams and the Bucs aren’t far removed from being scarred by bad kicking. That memory of how bad the kicking was before the Brady era began might make it a tough sell to fans that kicking might be easy to replace, but with the money Tampa Bay can save and potentially help other key areas of the roster, it makes a lot of sense.
If the nightmare of the Bucs kicking search of years past gives anyone anxiety, just consider the home run the team hit by drafting Jake Camarada and have faith that Succop’s replacement can be found.
Donovan Smith was awful last year, there’s no other way to put it. His play was a microcosm of the season as a whole because he should have been so much better than he was yet we all watched the bottom fall out hard on a once solid left tackle.
He also represents the uphill battle the Bucs have this offseason. Smith needs to go, that much seems clear, but replacing him isn’t going to be easy. Good left tackles are hard to find, and moving off Smith means needing to find someone who won’t give the Bucs more of the same.
It’s impossible to overstate how frustrating it was to watch Smith sink deeper and deeper into the depths of bad offensive line play last year, or how much of a bummer it was to witness. Always good for a handful of bad holding penalties each game, some of which came as momentum-killers, Smith was ranked by Pro Football Focus ranked as the 68th tackle in the league.
Smith played tough through an elbow injury so as to not further deplete the Bucs offensive line — which is notably admirable and worth tipping the cap to. He also was a key part of one of the most exciting Tampa Bay offenses in franchise history, anchoring a line in 2020 and 2021 that protected Tom Brady to the point of him nearly winning MVP in both of those seasons.
He still has a year left on his contract, but there’s no way the Bucs will deem him worth the hefty price tag he carries. Smith’s cap hit is over $17 million but Tampa Bay can save $15.2 million by cutting or trading him after June 1st and can do so knowing there will likely be interest in him throughout the league.