Sean Murphy-Bunting is still shouting out the Bucs even after signing with Cardinals

As Dominic Toretto once said, 'I don't have friends, I got family.'

That was the motto Jason Licht and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers lived by through the first wave of free agency. It's been an offseason of reunions, from re-signing key players set to hit the market to bringing back a guy who has already done a tour of duty with the Bucs.

Baker Mayfield and Mike Evans signed extensions after it appeared they'd test free agency, while Lavonte David, Chase McLaughlin, and Chase Edmonds headlined a list of veterans who also returned. Tampa Bay's biggest external move was signing Jordan Whitehead, who helped the team win a Super Bowl back in 2020 before spending the last two seasons with the Jets.

That says a lot about how well respected the Bucs are, and that feeling extends beyond players who returned and to ones who can't help but look back on their time in Tampa Bay and smile.

Sean Murphy-Bunting is still shouting out the Bucs even after signing with Cardinals

Rather than return to Tampa Bay to help bolster the cornerback room, Sean Murphy-Bunting parlayed a decent season with Tennessee into a fat $25.5 million payday with the Arizona Cardinals. Even though he won't be coming back like Whitehead did, Murphy-Bunting still holds a special place in his heart for the Bucs.

While making an appearance on SirusXM Radio, Murphy-Bunting called out three former Bucs teammates as leaders who helped shape the culture and turn in him to the player he is today: Lavonte David, Ndamukong Suh, and Tom Brady.

Per JoeBucsFan:

"Murphy-Bunting talked about how the team never had any finger-pointing or “blame game” no matter the adversity, and he said the roster was unified when it came to helping each other improve daily."

So much was made about how the Bucs fumbled the bag to reset its culture when Tom Brady retired. The guys writing this is as guilty as anyone, since it seemed that without a clear plan in place for the Post-Brady era, Tampa Bay would drift back into football irrelevancy.

That didn't happen, and instead the strong foundation that Jason Licht had been putting in place since he arrived back in 2014 paid off in a big way. His belief in Baker Mayfield helped reset the culture in ways nobody expected, while veterans like Lavonte David and Tristan Wirfs stepped up to help usher the team into the future.

Guys like Baker and Evans don't pass up potentially bigger deals on the market to return to Tampa Bay if things are in shambles. Murphy-Bunting still shouting out the Bucs for what they meant to him and his career is proof that the culture thing isn't new, and has never been about specific individuals in the locker room so much as it is about the guy who put them all there -- and kept them there -- in the first place.

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