Speaker 1: Welcome to Buccaneers inside of Live presented by Miller like
Speaker 1: Casey Phillips and Scott Smith here. And we are a
Speaker 1: little bit later than normal doing this because we wanted
Speaker 1: to make sure we've got a chance to check out
Speaker 1: the press conference with Shack Barrett. Uh if you guys
Speaker 1: didn't get a chance to see that, it will be
Speaker 1: up on the Buccaneers Facebook page and website. But it
Speaker 1: was announcing the good news Shack Barrett is back. Uh
Speaker 1: So at first, I just wanted to get your reaction
Speaker 1: that while we give people chance to submit their questions
Speaker 1: underneath the Facebook Live video they have for us, we
Speaker 1: now know that that Shack is back, which is so exciting.
Speaker 1: And tell me your thoughts on how they were able
Speaker 1: to get this done well. It helped to have both
Speaker 1: sides being very very motivated. Um, Shack actually made that
Speaker 1: clear all along. He made the clear as recently as
Speaker 1: far back as last year before we got the franchise tag.
Speaker 1: He was very motivated to be here. So they just
Speaker 1: had to get the numbers right and they found a
Speaker 1: way to do that, which hasn't been easy this year.
Speaker 1: You know, the all the efforts to bring all these
Speaker 1: guys back, which are still ongoing and involve a lot
Speaker 1: of working around a tough salary cap situation because the
Speaker 1: salary cap went down this year, which nobody anticipated a
Speaker 1: year ago. So um, it helps. I think that he
Speaker 1: really really wanted to come back here, and he stressed
Speaker 1: that again. He said there's nowhere else he really wanted
Speaker 1: to be. He was really focused on coming back here.
Speaker 1: And uh. He also said one thing that I liked
Speaker 1: is he says he feels like he can play a
Speaker 1: lot better than he did last year, and he was
Speaker 1: really good last year. He says his issue is he
Speaker 1: needs to be a dominant player game to game. He
Speaker 1: needs more consistency and and you know, I mean, I
Speaker 1: know as Sax went down from nineteen point five, which
Speaker 1: is incredible to eight, but he was still third in
Speaker 1: the league in quarterback pressures and you know you saw
Speaker 1: him in the Super Bowl. He was all over the place.
Speaker 1: So um, if you can get more of that almost
Speaker 1: every game from Shack Barrett, and this is going to
Speaker 1: be a contract that is well well worth it. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: And also since our last show, we had last show
Speaker 1: been able to talk about some rumors about Lavonte David,
Speaker 1: but he had not officially signed, so we hadn't gotten
Speaker 1: to really dive into that last week. Uh take us
Speaker 1: through similar things of his resigning, what they really to
Speaker 1: do there with his contract and what him coming back
Speaker 1: beats well. I love it. I mean, you could argue
Speaker 1: and argue and it'd be a fun argument about which
Speaker 1: was the most important player for the Buccaneers to get back.
Speaker 1: Was that Chris Godden was a check bet was Levante
Speaker 1: David And reasonable minds can disagree, But I can tell
Speaker 1: you from the from the satisfaction standpoint of us being
Speaker 1: able to bring one of those guys back, I don't
Speaker 1: think it was gonna get any higher than Levante David,
Speaker 1: just because he has now established himself as one of
Speaker 1: the greatest players and also one of the most well
Speaker 1: respected players in the history of this franchise. I noted
Speaker 1: when we signed him that now, since he's played nine seasons,
Speaker 1: he's gonna go. He's gonna finish at least a decade
Speaker 1: with the Buccaneers, and he'll on maybe the fourteenth guy
Speaker 1: to do that. I mean, that makes him one of
Speaker 1: the pillars of this team up there with the likes
Speaker 1: of the Derek Brooks's and John Lynch's and the Warren
Speaker 1: SAPs and Rodney Barber's and all that. He's sort of
Speaker 1: the new generation of that. You know, ten fifteen years
Speaker 1: from now, we'll be looking at him the way we
Speaker 1: look at say, Randee Barber, Derek Brooks, and um, I
Speaker 1: think he's got a lot of good years left in
Speaker 1: him and I'm just I'm absolutely thrilled that he's coming back. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And uh, Mitchell had asked where are we at on
Speaker 1: cap space? That is the big question of this whole
Speaker 1: time of year, and it has been fascinating this year.
Speaker 1: We mentioned earlier about how the cap shrunk and that's
Speaker 1: not something that typically happens, and how when you're planning
Speaker 1: all these contracts you don't originally think that's going to happen.
Speaker 1: So take us through some of things that the front
Speaker 1: office has done to make sure you're able to bring
Speaker 1: back as many of these guys as possible under the
Speaker 1: cap and where we stand at this point. Yeah, As
Speaker 1: you know, the Bucks don't really ever publicly talk about
Speaker 1: the dollars in a contract or where they are in
Speaker 1: the cap, but there are plenty of sources online like
Speaker 1: over the cap dot com or spot track where you
Speaker 1: can get a good idea of where every team stands
Speaker 1: in cap space, and I happen to be looking at
Speaker 1: one of those earlier today and they're probably, if not accurate,
Speaker 1: pretty close to it. And they had us right now
Speaker 1: at nine point six million remaining under the cap. But
Speaker 1: it's really not You shouldn't key in too much on
Speaker 1: that number, because if the Bucks need to create more
Speaker 1: cap space, they will find a way to do it
Speaker 1: if they have, you know, a good deal in place
Speaker 1: for one of the players that they want to bring back,
Speaker 1: and so you know, there are ways to do that,
Speaker 1: and we've seen that, and really that's sort of been
Speaker 1: the story of this free agency period and lead up
Speaker 1: to it for the Buccaneers this year. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: I think most Pew fans know by now that for
Speaker 1: about a decade now, the Bucks have been really focusing
Speaker 1: on what you might call pay as you go contracts,
Speaker 1: where it's almost all salary and so the cap hit
Speaker 1: is very uniform across the contract, and if you have
Speaker 1: gotten past guaranteed money, it's easy to get out of
Speaker 1: it without hurting yourself on the cap. So it retains
Speaker 1: a lot of flexibility. But Jason light set in February
Speaker 1: that you do that so that when you get to
Speaker 1: a point where you think you can win multiple championships,
Speaker 1: you can then get more creative with your contracts to
Speaker 1: try to keep the gang together. And Shack was saying
Speaker 1: today that after he won his Super Bowl in Denver
Speaker 1: that they weren't able to do that. They couldn't bring
Speaker 1: back some free agents. They had to cut some guys.
Speaker 1: The Buccaneers are now employing some of these other strategies
Speaker 1: like backloading contracts in avoidable years and signing bonuses that
Speaker 1: spread out the cap hit over the course of the
Speaker 1: contract in order to make these contracts have a lower
Speaker 1: cap hit right now, so that keep all of these guys,
Speaker 1: and that means you'll have to deal with it in
Speaker 1: the future, but teams do that all the time, and
Speaker 1: everybody expects the salary cap to go up in the
Speaker 1: years to come, especially when the new broadcast deals are signed,
Speaker 1: it could go up a lot. So it really is
Speaker 1: a good strategy for the Bucks to do right now,
Speaker 1: and they're doing it in order to try to keep
Speaker 1: this core intact. Okay, and uh Francisco asked, do you
Speaker 1: think we will get a quarterback in the draft, and
Speaker 1: If so, who would you go for. Well, here's what
Speaker 1: I would say about the Bucks and a quarterback, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of similar to what they said last year.
Speaker 1: I don't think the Buckners are going to go into
Speaker 1: this draft with the notion that we have to come
Speaker 1: out of this with a quarterback. And I certainly don't
Speaker 1: think they're going to use their first round pick, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, so late it probably wouldn't work anyway to
Speaker 1: take what they think as the quarterback in the future
Speaker 1: after Tom Brady. I think it's a matter of the opportunity.
Speaker 1: If the pick and the player uh line up well,
Speaker 1: you know, third round, fourth round, fifth round, whatever, then
Speaker 1: they do it. And and there's probably the fact that
Speaker 1: this team is so loaded and then we're getting a
Speaker 1: lot of these guys back actually helps with that because,
Speaker 1: as Jason light said, if you go into that draft
Speaker 1: without really glaring needs anywhere on the depth chart, you
Speaker 1: can make some luxury picks, and maybe a luxury pick
Speaker 1: is a quarterback that you could you could try to
Speaker 1: develop over the next couple of years. But with Tom
Speaker 1: Brady signed at least through UM, this guy, anybody that
Speaker 1: we bring in isn't going to start for a couple
Speaker 1: of years, yeah, which could always be nice that developmental guide.
Speaker 1: And related to that, Charles had asked what you think
Speaker 1: about the QB situation overall, including guys like Gabert and Griffin,
Speaker 1: if there was a quarterback in the draft of potential
Speaker 1: free agent any of those options of what you think
Speaker 1: this room could look like next year and how similar
Speaker 1: will look to how the room looked last year. I
Speaker 1: think that um, Bruce Arians would prefer at this point
Speaker 1: where the Bucks are right now with Tom Brady and
Speaker 1: committed to him for at least two more seasons, what
Speaker 1: they would probably like to have right behind him is
Speaker 1: an experience veteran like they've had with Blaine Gabbert. Blame
Speaker 1: was hurt two years ago, but last year he was
Speaker 1: your your main backup the entire season. Didn't end up
Speaker 1: needing him really that he played the second half in
Speaker 1: Detroit because we were blowing them away. But um, I
Speaker 1: think that Bruce Arians has trusted him. He's played in
Speaker 1: his system, and he's won games as a starter for him,
Speaker 1: So to me, that would seem like plan A. Of course,
Speaker 1: he's an unrestricted free agent right now, so we'll see.
Speaker 1: But I tend to think even if you bring on
Speaker 1: a rookie, they're gonna want to veteran behind Tom Brady
Speaker 1: and then they're one gonna want to hope they never
Speaker 1: have to use them. Okay, And Richard said, what do
Speaker 1: you think is the higher draft priority running back, d
Speaker 1: line or edge rush rotation. Well, it became less of
Speaker 1: a priority at edge rush now that we resigned Shack Barrett.
Speaker 1: But I think you always can add guys at that position, um,
Speaker 1: just to get depth into to plan for the future.
Speaker 1: So I could still see us taking an edge guy
Speaker 1: at thirty two if there's one we really like there. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't think running back is necessarily a huge need,
Speaker 1: but again that could be a luxury pick. If you
Speaker 1: love say Travis et n and he's there at thirty two, um,
Speaker 1: and you don't really have a glaring need you have
Speaker 1: to dress, you could do that. But of those three
Speaker 1: he mentioned, I would think defensive line has to be
Speaker 1: the answer at the moment because you have three players
Speaker 1: right now who are still unrestricted for agents. Hope we
Speaker 1: can get some are all of them back, But that's
Speaker 1: in Dominican Sue and Nacho and Steve McClendon. So just
Speaker 1: simply by the numbers, that seems like the biggest need
Speaker 1: um we have, of course, a few different questions about
Speaker 1: the upcoming um potential free agencies are still unsigned, of
Speaker 1: how many guys those are left, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: give us an update on who is is still left
Speaker 1: to either be signed or to be losing in free agency,
Speaker 1: and what you think some of those next moves could be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've seen some rumors that that give us a little
Speaker 1: bit of confidence we're gonna get some more of those
Speaker 1: guys back. But I think the key ones right now
Speaker 1: are in Dominican Sue. Obviously Rob Gronkowski, the kicker. I
Speaker 1: think we tend to forget that Ryan suck Up had
Speaker 1: such an amazing year, and when you're talking about your
Speaker 1: Chris Godwin's and your Lavante David, you you don't immediately
Speaker 1: think of the kicker. But Ryan Suckup was great last
Speaker 1: year and he's a free agent. Um Antonio Brown, uh,
Speaker 1: the the defensive lignement that I mentioned in addition to
Speaker 1: in Dominan Sue. Those and then of course, like we
Speaker 1: were just talking about both of our backup quarterbacks playing
Speaker 1: Gabbett and Ryan Griffin. So there's still could be a
Speaker 1: lot of work to do, and there still could be
Speaker 1: some significant losses, but I think we're off to a
Speaker 1: start and I've got some confidence we'll get a couple
Speaker 1: more guys back. All right, Well, that is going to
Speaker 1: do it for us on Buccaneers Inside our Live presented
Speaker 1: by Miller Lite. Thinks there's always for those amazing questions
Speaker 1: and we'll see you next week. M h.