Bucs Clips
Jon Gruden, who won Super Bowl XXXVII as Tampa Bay’s head coach, will be in the broadcast booth as the play-by-play announcer for the Bucs’ second preseason game against the Chiefs on Aug. 22.
He spoke with local Buccaneers media on Thursday, saying he’s “fired up” for the gig.
“We’ve got a great young team here, we’ve added some players,” Gruden said in his press conference. “And to be up there with Ronde Barber for three-and-a-half hours, God knows what’s going to happen. But we’re going to have fun. We’re going to celebrate the Bucs and hopefully kick off what’s going to be what’s going to be a really special season.”
Gruden noted he’s planning for the broadcast to be a lot more about Barber than himself.
“I’ve heard I’m doing play-by-play, but I don’t know if we’ve solved anything,” Gruden said. “It’s going to be Ronde’s show. He’s the star. I’m just — we’re going to have a production meeting, I know, on August 17 and we’re going to finalize the cadence. But I’m excited. I’m a little bit nervous. And as always, really fired up for football season — especially the Buccaneers.”
Gruden said he’s missed the camaraderie of being around a broadcast team, which he got used to while working on Monday Night Football. He left the booth to come back to coaching with the Raiders in 2018.
“I had a lot of fun doing it for nine years,” Gruden said. “I was very fortunate, on Monday Night Football, especially the years with [Mike] Tirico. We had a lot of fun. We took every game like it was the Super Bowl — we took it very seriously, had a lot of fun. So, I enjoyed the profession. And at this point in my life, I still study football all the time, I’m still a big fan of the Bucs. I live right down the street. So, I’m really excited about it.”
Baker Mayfield made his feelings about his contract clear when he told reporters last week that he was feeling “disrespected” and “undervalued” by the Buccaneers.
But with Mayfield pledging to be focused on “all ball” going forward, General Manager Jason Licht is not concerned about the state of things between the front office and the club’s quarterback.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Licht said the team still feels Mayfield is a franchise quarterback.
“Well, I’m not going to get into the specifics about the contract and all that stuff. But yeah, we think he is,” Licht said, via Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times. “We love Baker. Our feelings for Baker haven’t changed.”
Licht also seemed to be understanding of Mayfield’s comments from last week.
“Baker, as we all know here, is a very fiery competitor who’s not afraid to speak his mind,” Licht said, via Greg Auman of FOX Sports. “I’m sure he’s disappointed, frustrated; we were too. We’re in a good place. He’s focused on having the best year of his career.”
Mayfield is entering the last season of a three-year, $100 million deal he signed with the Bucs in March of 2024. He was offered a two-year contract extension, which did not rise to the level of him feeling valued by the organization.
Last year, Mayfield completed 63.2 percent of his passes for 3,693 yards with 26 touchdowns and 11 interceptions.
Buccaneers defensive tackle Vita Vea’s agent said this week that he doesn’t see Vea’s contract impasse with the team “ending in anything but a trade at this point,” but the team is taking a different view of things.
Vea requested a trade ahead of training camp after spending the offseason working to land a new contract in Tampa and the team said it didn’t intend to make a move at the time. On Thursday, General Manager Jason Licht reiterated at a press conference, via multiple reporters, that he has “no plans” to make a trade.
Licht acknowledged that he doesn’t know how things will end with the longtime Buc defender, but that they have “engaged” with Vea’s representatives.
Vea has not been practicing at camp, which some have called a hold-in despite head coach Todd Bowles saying Vea tweaked his back during a conditioning test. Licht said that the team does not want Vea to aggravate the issue and that there’s no timetable for when Vea might start practicing this summer.
Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles said that the team is “not concerned” about defensive tackle Vita Vea’s continued absence from practice in the wake of his trade request, but it also doesn’t sound like there’s much optimism about a new contract that would put an end to Vea’s hold-in at training camp.
Vea’s agent Collin Roberts told Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times that there has not been any progress toward an agreement. Vea is in the final year of his current contract and Roberts said his client still desires a move to a team that might be more amenable to giving him a new one.
“I just don’t see it ending in anything but a trade at this point,” Roberts said.
A bleak outlook now doesn’t mean that progress can’t be made in the days to come, but the pessimism from Vea’s camp about a solution that will keep him in Tampa means that the Bucs might take a different view of the situation before the start of the regular season.
Defensive tackle Vita Vea remains off the field at Buccaneers training camp and head coach Todd Bowles said on Tuesday that he remains unworried about where things stand.
Vea is looking for a new contract and he requested a trade as camp got underway, but there’s been no reports of progress toward either outcome over the last week. That suggests Vea won’t be taking part in any on-field work in the near future and Bowles told reporters that the situation won’t become urgent for a while.
“Again, it’s still early,” Bowles said in a press conference. “We’ve only been in pads for two days. We’re not concerned at this point and I think those things take care of themselves. Once you get past two or three preseason games, you start to worry a little bit.”
Bowles said Vea has been “very engaged” despite his impasse with the organization, but a finish line remains somewhere over the horizon in Tampa.
Last year, Buccaneers rookie linebacker David Walker was making a great impression. But then, in the team’s third training-camp practice, he suffered a torn ACL.
This year, Walker is back. And he’s back to making a great impression again.
“He’s got his quickness and his speed back,” Bucs coach Todd Bowles said, via Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times. “So as a pass rusher, he’s looked very good as far as his movements and everything else. I was just excited to see him in pads last year [before the injury], so right now he looks very good. He’s looking fast.”
Walker, a fourth-round pick, is ready to make the impact he didn’t get a chance to make in 2025.
“I just want to thank God,” Walker said, per Stroud. “The injury was big and the whole time I knew that He didn’t bring me this far to bring me this far. So I knew I had to attack rehab, I knew I had to do those things and I’m here. I’m back playing the game that I love. It’s exciting. It’s exciting.”
The Bucs will get a better look at what he can do when he practices for the first time in pads, on Monday.
“I think he can do almost everything,” Bowles said. “Height-wise, he’s probably the shortest of the bunch. Everybody forgets he’s 260-something. He plays with great leverage and power. I think he’s played both sides. He’s probably a good inside kicker as well getting off the ball and doing some things like that. So when he gets the pads on, we’ll figure it out.”
”I’m just taking it day by day,” Walker said. “I’m not trying to look too far ahead. I’m not trying to look at whether I might be playing or not. I’m trying to do what I can do to compete.”
If he does what the Bucs think he can do, they’ll go a long way toward boosting their pass rush. Having first-round rookie Reuben Bain Jr. won’t hurt.
If we’ve learned nothing about sports documentaries in recent years, it’s that the subjects of the documentaries often have the ability to keep some of the facts that have been documented from being included in the finished product.
And so it should surprise no one that Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield had the ability to pull the plug on anything that the producers of the Quarterback series proposed for inclusion into the final cut.
The topic came up during Mayfield’s Thursday press conference, the one that focused primarily on his contract situation with the team.
“To be honest with you, I didn’t watch the full series,” Mayfield said. “They sent all the clips of us in it, just so I could give the final OK. Apologies to the families of little kiddos because the language on there is actually not very suited for them. It’s — might be a little angry elf on the field every once in a while. So that’s probably the part that I do regret a little bit, but that’s the fire on the field, unfortunately, that comes out on TV.
“But, yeah, I wanted to portray that I’m all ball. It’s — you can say what you want in the media. You can say I’m cocky and whatever, but it’s all ball. I love my teammates, I love this game, and I love playing it.”
Mayfield added that “there’s a few things” he exercised his prerogative to remove from the show.
It’s the key caveat to keep in mind as to any of these shows. Even though we’re ostensibly getting access to key behind-the-scenes moments, we still only get to see and hear the things the subject of the production wants us to see and hear.
And it’s surely fair to assume the other quarterbacks who have submitted to the series have had that same power. Approval of the final cut became part of the deal from the early days of Hard Knocks. In 2010, when the question of final say had become a talking point, former Ravens coach Brian Billick confirmed that his team had the ability to remove content during the very first year of the show, in 2001.
While it’s better than the alternative of having nothing at all, the power of the teams in Hard Knocks or the players in Quarterback to say “strike that from the tape” should always be remembered.
Especially when things slip through that probably should have been scrubbed, like the time Hue Jackson clumsily asserted in a meeting with his staff that “I get to drive this bus” and pretty much all of the Giants’ run on the one-and-done offseason version of Hard Knocks.
On Thursday, Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield had plenty to say about his inability to get the team to offer him a contract that he deemed to be suitable. On Friday, coach Todd Bowles was asked for his reaction.
“I didn’t have a reaction,” Bowles told reporters. “You know, he had a few things to say. He said it. We’re all about ball today, and we moved on.”
Bowles has the kind of even keel that rarely results in him having a public reaction to anything — except when the team blew a Thursday night game against the Falcons.
From Bowles’s perspective, Mayfield’s status beyond 2026 doesn’t matter. With 10 head-coaching jobs opening up after the 2025 season, it’s clearer than ever that the NFL is a year-to-year business.
Mayfield’s contract status gives him an added incentive to have the best year possible in 2026. Which will boost Bowles’s prospects for returning in 2027.
When it comes to the battle between the Buccaneers and quarterback Baker Mayfield, the fans may be naturally inclined to support the team. One of the men who block for Baker is publicly supporting the player.
On the key question of whether Mayfield is a “franchise quarterback,” Bucs guard Cody Mauch said this to reporters on Friday, via Abby DiSalvo of the Tampa Bay Times: “One hundred percent. He for sure is.”
Mauch knows Mayfield’s malcontentedness with his contract won’t affect him on the field.
“It sucks to see him go through this and whatnot, but it’s not going to change his mentality, the way he plays,” Mauch said. “He’s talked a lot about it, but he’s just going to go and play ball.”
The fact that other players are being asked about Mayfield’s contract makes it a distraction by definition. But the side issue will subside quickly.
“The biggest thing we took away from it is that we’re playing ball now,” Mauch said. “He’s not worried about contract stuff. It’s all about the 2026 Bucs.”
Come 2027, it may be all about Baker leaving the Bucs.
“It’s unfortunate, but he’s gonna go ball out and it’s gonna get made right,” Mauch said. “No doubt in my mind he’s gonna do that and get even more money, so it’s gonna work out better for him in the end.”
With the NFL evolving into a one-year-at-a-time league, it’s easier than it used to be for the players to forget about anything but this year. That’s what the Tampa Bay players should do, and Mauch has given them the key talking points for their own inevitable questions about Baker’s contract brouhaha.
If, as it appears, quarterback Baker Mayfield doesn’t sign a new contract with the Buccaneers until after the 2026 season, what happens next?
The team will have, in theory, exclusive negotiating rights with Mayfield until the opening of the negotiating window in March. By then, Mayfield may be determined to see what the market will be for him in 2027. (There’s a chance his agents already have an inkling as to the possible options.)
The franchise tag will be available. With a cap number in 2026 of $39.975 million, the 2027 tag would be $47.7 million. As noted by the folks at Spotrac, Mayfield’s current deal has a $30.15 million dead-money charge for 2027. Using the tag would result in Mayfield counting for $77.85 million against the cap in 2027.
They could tag him and trade him, but they’d need to carry the extra $47.7 million in cap space until they do.
Or the Bucs could let him walk away. The market would then determine his value.
That’s where it gets interesting. Via ESPN, Mayfield’s camp pointed to quarterbacks whose contracts are currently north of $50 million in APY: Jordan Love ($55 million), Trevor Lawrence ($55 million), and Brock Purdy ($53 million). Right or wrong, deals of that magnitude were given to players who were drafted and developed by the team that paid them. Veterans rarely get that kind of a contract from a team for which they’ve never played.
It still happens. Kirk Cousins has twice gotten major contracts on the open market. The Vikings made him the highest-paid quarterback in the NFL in 2018, when he left Washington. The Falcons paid him $45 million per year two years ago.
Much of what happens in early 2027 depends on how things go this year. The better his season, the more he’ll make. And the more likely the Bucs will be to find a way to tag him.
That’s where the dog starts chasing its tail. The more likely he’ll break the bank as a free agent, the more likely it becomes that the Bucs will tag him.
Then there’s the possibility that Mayfield’s decision to take a flamethrower to the Bucs wasn’t just Baker being Baker but a strategic move aimed at making them want to move on.
If so, the Buccaneers had better have a good plan for finding a quarterback in 2027. The current options on the roster are Jake Browning, Jalon Daniels, and Connor Bazelak.
Which confirms the point. If Mayfield leaves, they’ll need to find a new starter.
There’s a long way before we get there. But there isn’t. Once the season gets rolling, it’ll be over before we know it. And then the question will be whether it’s over for Mayfield in Tampa.
