Former Buccaneers wide receiver hints at retirement

It sounds like yet another former Tampa Bay Buccaneers player is calling it a career.

This offseason has been clouded in the aftermath of Tom Brady retiring, something that forced the franchise to move into a new direction. We all knew it was coming, and the lack of preparation was initially frustrating although it seems the team has figured it out.

We shall see if the signing of Baker Mayfield has the sort of positive impact the front office thinks it will, but all eyes are on the future.

Brady isn’t the only thing the Bucs are leaving in the past, nor are they the only ones looking to wrap up an era. DeSean Jackson sounds like he’s ready to call it a career after 15 seasons in the league, two of which he spent in Tampa Bay during the dark ages of the mid-2010s.

DeSean Jackson posts cryptic message on Instagram

Jackson posted a message to his Instagram account that certainly sounded like a retirement announcement.

“Did it my way 15 years strong!! Neva anotha like it,” Jackson wrote.

Nobody sends that message without knowing how it will be interpreted, and it’s not the sort of thing someone who is gearing up for another season posts.

Retirement is well earned for Jackson, who will be best remembered for his time with the Philadelphia Eagles but is fondly remembered in Tampa Bay. His time with the team wasn’t exactly the same as Keyshawn Johnson’s, but his arrival sort of felt adjacent at the beginning.

Jackson signed with the Bucs back in 2017 but was almost a decade into his career at that point. Still, he was among teh league’s most explosive receivers at the time and was still in his prime of being a home run threat.

As we learned, it was the tail-end of his prime, but he still led the league in average yards during his second season and recorded the fourth-longest touchdown reception of his career. He also gave us an iconic moment when he lent Ryan Fitzpatrick his wardrobe following an upset win over the Eagles.

Jackson also set two career-highs with the Bucs, which in a weird way sums up his time with the team. In his first season, Jackson set a career-high in rushing average and the following season did the same thing for rushing touchdowns.

All of that — the stats and the FitzMagic moment — perfectly sum up Jackson’s time with the Bucs. He wasn’t singularly able to have an impact large enough to elevate any of those teams to anything more than being fleetingly interesting. That’s not Jackson’s fault, though, and not many Bucs fans will argue against his time spent with the team.