Titans can fix Tampa Bay Buccaneers cap problem with sneaky trade
By Will Lomas
Where did Tampa Bay spend all their money?
Right now Tampa Bay has 10 players making more than $8 million in 2020 and that includes a group of good and bad deals.
Praises first, the Bucs have locked down one of the best WRs in the NFL with Mike Evans. Meanwhile, keeping Shaq Barrett and Jason Pierre-Paul for another season is a very solid move even if Barrett doesn’t replicate his 2019 season.
Paying $50 million for a quarterback that Bill Belichick didn’t want is…bold but in the QB market a getting a QB who has the upside of a top-10 QB is worth $25 million per year so that is fine.
Back to another positive, Lavonte David has been one of my favorite linebackers since he came out of Nebraska and he has been a stalwart for that defense for a long time. Locking him up is a no brainer to me.
That leaves us with 5 players, and I really want to talk about four of them and put the last guy in his own category. The 4 players are:
-Ryan Jensen (eh, alright)
-Donavan Smith (no thank you)
-Ndamukong Suh (Fine)
-Ali Marpet (Getting paid like a top-10 guard…)
Those deals are all things that the team probably has to stomach even though there isn’t much value there. Solidifying the offensive line is important and you have to pay left tackles in the NFL, meanwhile, Ndamukong Suh is above average across the board and fit well in that defense last year even though he doesn’t make a huge impact.
The big one that I want to talk about and the final player to make more than $8 million in 2020 for the Tampa Bay Bucs is Rob Gronkowski and his $9 million contract. That is just insane to me because you are paying a player who retired after 2018 and spent his off time enjoying his life and winning titles in the WWE.
His body was breaking down in 2018 and instead of rolling with Cameron Brate and O.J. Howard, the Bucs paid Gronk top-5 TE money?
Cap space is a complicated thing and it has a lot of intricacies, but it is bad moves like that that prevents teams from adding players that would be good fits at need positions.
So why are the Titans the right team to help the Bucs out of this situation?