4 free agents Bucs could sign to replace Russell Gage
With Russell Gage out for the season, what would it look like if Bucs turned to the free agent market to fill void?
By Josh Hill
On Wednesday the Tampa Bay Buccaneers lost starting wide receiver Russell Gage to a season-ending injury. Losing Gage opens up a spot on the depth chart that Todd Bowles and Dave Canales need to properly fill sooner rather than later.
Whenever something like this happens, the knee-jerk reaction is to start thinking of free agents a team can sign. For the Bucs, the lack of spending money presents a predicament that might prevent them from being able to go that route.
According to OTC, Tampa Bay has the absolute worst cap situation in the entire league, with little more than $682k to spend.
That's it.
With the veteran minimum around $1.08M for players with three or more years of experience -- which all of the guys the Bucs would be interested in have -- it's tough to see them making a move. Doing so would require someone to be released and have it make sense on the ledger.
That means not creating dead cap space or cutting into the cap.
Let's pretend the Bucs do that and are able to scrounge up enough money to sign one of the remaining free agent wide receivers. If that happened, who could be a potential fit?
4. 31. Golladay. Age: 29. Last Team: New York Giants. Kenny Golladay. . . Kenny Golladay. player
While he struggled in his final year with the New York Giants, a lot of the setback seemed to revolve around drama between Golladay and the team.
A narrative all season long was that Golladay wasn’t being used the way he wanted to and the Giants eventually stopped using him at all. He’s only 29 years old and might have a few more good seasons left in him. After all, he’s less than five years removed from being a Pro Bowl receiver with the Detroit Lions and would easily fill the WR3 role for the Bucs alongside Mike Evans and Chris Godwin.