Buccaneers quietly release QB after signing Teddy Bridgewater

After signing QB Teddy Bridgewater, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quietly made a roster move to make more room. (Mandatory Credit: Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images)
After signing QB Teddy Bridgewater, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quietly made a roster move to make more room. (Mandatory Credit: Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images) | Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images

A position battle that has gone from the outskirts of Tampa Bay Buccaneers training camp to near the middle of the action is happening at quarterback. Nobody is usurping Baker Mayfield anytime soon unless there's an injury -- knock on wood -- but the battle for who will be his backup seems to be heating up.

It appeared to have been Kyle Trask's job, but the addition of Teddy Bridgewater complicates things slightly. The Buccaneers weren't in the market for a backup quarterback until an injury to Michael Pratt started an unexpected ball rolling.

When Baker Mayfield suffered a hand contusion that held him out of action, the Bucs sprang to sign Bridgewater, and now the dominoes are starting to fall. On Tuesday, the team announced that Pratt had been released, which means there's one less body in the quarterback room behind Baker.

This might seem like a low-key roster move, but it directly plays into the narrative of what will happen behind Baker on the depth chart. Trask started Saturday's preseason opener against the Titans and looked pretty good but his comments after the game raised some questions about what the Bucs intentions really are.

Publicly, we were told that signing Bridgewater was merely the Bucs adding an extra arm in camp to account for injuries to Baker and Pratt. That's apparently not what the team told Trask, as he said he was never given a straight answer about why Bridgewater was signed.

That's unnecessarily mysterious and seems to suggest we have a quarterback battle on our hands.

Bridgewater is expected to play in this Saturday's game in Pittsburgh, and if he performs well then the conversation about who will be Baker's backup will only get louder.

There's also a chance that this ends up as a stalemate. Trask has continuity, but Bridgewater has veteran leadership, both of which are valuable to have in the quarterback room. It's possible that the Bucs will carry both on the final roster, something that removing Pratt from the equation significantly raises the likelihood of.

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