The Buccaneers signed wide receiver Jha’Quan Jackson on Wednesday, the team announced.
In a corresponding move, the Bucs waived wide receiver Dennis Houston with an injury designation.
Jackson originally entered the NFL as a sixth-round selection by the Titans in the 2024 draft. He appeared in 12 games as a rookie, catching one pass for 8 yards while contributing primarily as a return specialist. He totaled 412 yards on 16 kickoff returns (25.8 avg.) and 215 yards on 28 punt returns (7.7 avg.).
In addition to the Titans, Jackson has also briefly spent time with the Saints in 2025 and the Texans in 2026.
He played collegiately at Tulane University (2019-23), appearing in 56 career games and made 109 catches for 1,743 yards and 17 touchdowns.
Bucs Clips
Buccaneers first-round pick Rueben Bain is dealing with a shoulder injury.
Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that the linebacker has an AC joint sprain. The injury is not considered to be a serious one and Bain is currently expected to be available for Tampa’s Week 1 game against the Bengals.
The Bucs will be in Cincinnati for that game on September 13, which leaves Bain with 18 days to heal before the season opener.
Bain is expected to play a key role off the edge for the Bucs, who are looking to the rookie to help improve a pass rush that was lacking too often during the 2025 season.
The Buccaneers signed rookie wide receiver Matthew Henry on Tuesday, the team announced.
In a corresponding move, the Bucs placed rookie defensive lineman Deshawn McKnight on injured reserve. McKnight injured a hamstring in the team’s preseason win over the Chiefs on Saturday night.
Henry finished his collegiate tenure last year at Western Kentucky after previous stops at Western Illinois and Livingstone College.
He started all 13 games for the Hilltoppers in 2025, hauling in 55 passes for 888 yards and six touchdowns. He was named to the All-Conference USA second team.
After going undrafted in April, he participated in rookie minicamps with the Titans and 49ers.
The Bucs need help at the position to get through the final week of the preseason. Wideouts Emeka Egbuka (toe), Jalen McMillan (knee) and Tez Johnson (groin) all have missed practice time this week.
Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker kicked a 69-yard field goal on the final play of the first half Saturday night.
Butker and the Chiefs celebrated as if it was an NFL record . . . and it would have been had it been the regular season.
Jaguars kicker Cam Little kicked a 68-yard field during a Nov. 2, 2025, game against the Raiders to set the record. Little had a 70-yard field goal as time expired against the Steelers in the 2025 preseason.
Butker’s kick cleared the crossbar by a few yards.
He also had field goals of 45 and 58 yards in the first half as the Chiefs lead the Bucs 9-0 at halftime.
On Saturday night, the Buccaneers will host the Chiefs for a preseason game. And the contest will be called, from the home team’s perspective, by Jon Gruden and Ronde Barber. Gruden will be handling the play-by-play duties, with Barber acting as the analyst.
But it sounds as if it will be far from a traditional broadcast. Via JoeBucsFan.com, Gruden recently addressed the plan for the effort in an appearance on The Ronde Barber Show.
“This might be a concept, you never know,” Gruden said. “This concept could be a game-changer in the broadcast booth. . . . I mean, there’s been a conventional way. I sat up there for nine years and did it. Mike Tirico, there was a cadence. ‘First-and-10, it’s da-ta-da-ta-da-ta-da,’ and then you have to be timely in your responses and get out before the next play. But I think as long as we’re on the same page, we love Tampa Bay Buccaneers. We’re going to try to really educate the fans on some of the position battles, just the excitement of opening day in our stadium.”
It will be interesting to see how they handle the game. It was always difficult to envision Gruden sticking to the nuts and bolts of what’s happening during a play without blurting out “what the hell was that?” before laying out for Barber’s input.
And maybe it will be a game-changer. Maybe, in time, the current formula of non-athlete narrator of the action plus one or two former players or coaches will be replaced by two or three former players and coaches who supplement the visuals with the kind of commentary that will pivot from describing what we can all see to peeling back the curtain as to what’s really happening.
But here’s the key — it can’t be a bunch of jargon. It has to be communicated in a way that makes it seem simple and easy to understand by a casual fan.
However it goes, we’ve heard that Gruden and Barber have been putting in a lot of work to prepare for this. They have a strategy. We’ll find out on Saturday night how they execute it.
Last year, the Buccaneers started strong, at 6-2. It ended with a 2-7 meltdown.
Many have blamed coach Todd Bowles for the collapse. Defensive tackle Vita Vea does not.
Vea shared on Thursday his thoughts about what went wrong last year.
“There’s a bunch of stuff,” Vea said, via JoeBucsFan.com. “I feel like I kind of want to set the record straight. I feel like [there is] a lot of stuff going about on Bowles. I feel like none of it is Bowles’ fault; I feel like we all love Bowles, the players in the locker room.
“So that’s one thing I want to set the record straight at; we all love Bowles. It’s not what he’s doing. You know, he’s telling us what to do, giving us all the answers to the test and it’s on us players to be able to go out there and execute what he’s telling us to do. He’s always putting us in the best position to play. So, that’s one of the main things, is being able to take coaching.
“And in that light, if anything, blame us players for not executing. Bowles always puts us in the best position to win games. I even told Bowles, the day he retires is the day I retire.”
Bowles arrived as Tampa Bay’s defensive coordinator in 2019, Vea’s second NFL season.
Despite Vea’s defense of Bowles, it feels like the heat is on for 2026. The NFC South is wide open, and the Bucs are the betting favorites to win it.
If they don’t, an ownership group that hasn’t hesitated to make changes could be looking to make another one.
Defensive tackle Vita Vea’s contract impasse with the Buccaneers came to an end on Wednesday when he agreed to a one-year extension that ties him to the team through 2027 with $30 million in new money.
That agreement came after Vea requested a trade heading into training camp, but Vea said at a Thursday press conference that his intent was never to move to another club. Vea said that “home is where the heart is” and made it clear that his heart was always in Tampa.
“I always wanted to be a Buc,” Vea said. “I wanted to be a Buc for life. That’s why I’m glad we were able to get this done. This is something that happens every year, it just so happened to be me this year. There’s just stuff we had to figure out on both sides and we got it all squared away.”
Vea has not practiced this summer and the word at Bucs camp has been that he’s been sidelined after tweaking his back during a conditioning test. Vea won’t play this week and head coach Todd Bowles said that he won’t play in the preseason finale either, but the new contract should clear the way for him to get ready for Week 1.
The Buccaneers announced the one-year extension for defensive lineman Vita Vea on Wednesday.
The deal took longer and was more acrimonious than expected, with Vea requesting a trade before holding in at training camp. Ultimately, though, both sides got what they wanted.
The Bucs will have Vea through at least the 2027 season, and Vea received $30 million in new money.
“Vita is exactly the type of player and person we want to build around in Tampa Bay,” General Manager Jason Licht said in a statement. “He has been a dominant force in the middle of our defense, an exceptional teammate, and a tremendous leader in our locker room. One of the keys to our recent success has been our ability to draft, develop and re-sign core, foundational players who set the standard for what it means to be a Buccaneer. As one of our team leaders, Vita has played a big role in establishing that winning culture, and we are excited to have him continuing to help lead the way as we pursue our next championship.”
Vea, the 12th overall selection in the 2018 draft, has appeared in 112 games with 107 starts over the past eight seasons. He has recorded 256 tackles, 35 sacks, 48 tackles, 79 quarterback hits, three forced fumbles, three fumble recoveries and nine passes defensed.
His 35 sacks rank eighth in franchise history.
One of the last 2026 hold-ins has ended.
The Buccaneers and defensive tackle Vita Vea have reached agreement on a one-year extension, per Adam Schefter of ESPN.
It’s a one-year, $30 million extension. Given that he was due to make $18 million in 2026, it becomes a two-year, $48 million deal.
Schefter adds that Vea gets $6 million in new money this year. That pushes his pay to $24 million for 2026.
The initial report doesn’t indicate that the deal is fully guaranteed. If not, it’s basically a $6 million raise with no commitment from the team for 2027.
Vea had avoided practice as he sought a new deal. He had repeatedly asked to be traded. In the end, the Bucs sweetened the pot enough to get him to stay with the only NFL team for which he has played.
A first-round pick in 2018, Vea has appeared in 112 regular-season games with 107 starts. He made the Pro Bowl in 2021 and 2024, and he was a member of the Super Bowl LV-winning team in 2020.
As franchise quarterbacks with family fractures go, most of the attention is given to Aaron Rodgers. But Baker Mayfield has also had some significant friction in his family, through no fault his own.
Via Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times, Mayfield said the fences are being mended.
It started when Mayfield and his wife, Emily, began to seek an accounting of millions that Mayfield’s father and brother had siphoned into their businesses. The situation sparked an initial lawsuit, along with a settlement requiring repayment of $11.741 million. A second lawsuit was filed when Mayfield believed the settlement was being violated.
“In the past few months, I’ve been reconnected with my family,” Mayfield said, per Stroud. “It’s been good. Also, for them to have two grandbabies, it’s tough. What’s in the past is in the past. Emily and I took [Kova] down right around her second birthday. . . . First time they met her, and you [could] tell it just melted them.”
It couldn’t have been easy for Mayfield to let bygones be bygones, given the amount of money that was gone.
“You can’t put yourself on a pedestal and act like I haven’t made mistakes in my life,” Mayfield said. “I had the ability to forgive and that was what I wanted to get across. But we’re here and the door is open. The past few months, we have made good progress and began reconnecting.”
Family is everything, as Hector Salamanca once said. The fact that Mayfield could forgive the mishandling of his hard-earned money is an impressive thing. Many wouldn’t be able to do that.
