Buccaneers listed as potential trade-up candidate with Chicago Bears

Could the Tampa Bay Buccaneers make a last-minute move and trade up into the Top 10 of the NFL Draft tonight? 

All offseason long there have been rumors tossed out about whether or not the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will make a move to land a franchise quarterback in this year’s draft.

The entire crux of this theory is the assumption that there are enough franchise quarterbacks to go around, which doesn’t seem to be the case. Nobody can land on a consensus for the top guy, which is almost always the case even if that pick ends up being wrong.

When Tom Brady retried he vacated the starting quarterback spot on the Bucs depth chart and opened the team up to rumors that a successor will be drafted this year. It makes sense in surface-level theory, especially considering the competition a rookie would face is Baker Mayfield and Kyle Trask.

All of this has fueled rumors that the Bucs are candidates to move out of the No. 19 pick and up high enough to land a guy that can finally become the franchise quarterback the team has always needed.

NFL Draft Rumors: Will Buccaneers trade up into the Top 10?

Our friends over at Bear Goggles On list the Bucs as a team that could trade up for Chicago’s pick and move into the No. 9 overall slot.

Per Bear Goggles On:

"Let’s say the Bucs’ number one quarterback is there at nine. They had him ranked over the guy Carolina took. We can all assume they also would take him over Carr, and Ridder, so the Bucs could be in a spot at pick nine where they think they can take the top quarterback in the division, possibly for the next four or five seasons."

Trading up is not a bad idea, but the Bucs trading up for a quarterback seems like a bad idea.

Beyond Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud, there’s a ton of uncertainty about who the next-best quarterback in the class is. That’s been reason enough for the Bucs to stay away from overpaying to move up and grab someone that might end up being the fourth or fifth best guy at his position, but it hasn’t stopped the rumors from spilling out all over the place.

Let’s not count out the idea of a trade, though.

Tampa Bay has been pegged as a team that might move up to get ahead of an expected run on top tackles in the first round, and this could be a massive leap to grab one a guy who certainly won’t be there at No. 19.

The price would need to be right, though. The speculation from Bear Goggles suggests the Bucs would give up a future first, which is way too expensive. Swapping firsts this year and giving up capital later on Day 2 either this year or next year would be easier to stomach.

If the Bucs traded into the Top 10, all of a sudden guys like Paris Johnson Jr and Peter Skoronski are in play. Matt Miller has Skoronski falling to the Bucs in his final mock draft, but the consensus on the Northwestern tackle seems to be that he won’t make it out of the Top-15.

Same with Johnson, who is viewed as the best tackle in the draft. If the Bucs can land one of them, that’s absolutely massive.