The Buccaneers made two roster moves on Saturday.
They signed Nebraska linebacker Javin Wright, bringing their total of undrafted rookies to 15. In a corresponding move, they waived first-year running back Michael Wiley with a non-football injury designation.
Wright appeared in 46 games in six seasons at Nebraska, moving into the starting lineup as a senior and leading the team with 86 tackles and nine tackles for loss. He also added three sacks, one interception and four passes defensed while playing in 12 games and starting 10.
Overall, Wright made 13 starts for the Cornhuskers and finished with 180 tackles, 12 tackles for loss, 3.5 sacks and three interceptions.
Wiley first joined the Bucs last October, spending the second half of the season on the team’s practice squad before re-signing on a futures contract in January. He played his college ball at Arizona and originally entered the NFL as an undrafted free agent with the Commanders in 2024.
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Veteran receiver Scotty Miller, who spent the 2024 and 2025 seasons in Pittsburgh, has found no takers in free agency. He’s participating in the Bears’ rookie minicamp on a tryout basis, in an effort to win a spot on the 90-man offseason roster.
As Larry Mayer of the team’s official website explains it, Miller made a “dazzling diving catch deep down the right sideline” on the last snap of Friday’s minicamp practice.
“He’s got a history with [receivers] coach [Antwaan] Randle El,” Bears coach Ben Johnson told reporters. “Randle El was with him when he was a young buck there in Tampa, so there are some shared experiences. Looking forward to seeing him run around and compete a little bit. From afar, I’ve been able to see the speed, quickness. [He’s] certainly very intriguing.”
A sixth-round pick of the Buccaneers in 2019, Miller won a Super Bowl in 2020 with Tampa. After four seasons there, he spent a year in Atlanta before joining the Steelers.
The 2020 season was his best, by far, with 33 catches for 501 yards and three touchdowns.
Linebacker John Bullock is rejoining the Buccaneers.
Tampa Bay claimed Bullock off waivers on Friday, a day after the Colts waived him. Indianapolis had claimed Bullock off waivers in January after the Bucs released him.
Bullock signed with the Bucs as an undrafted free agent in 2025, and he was one of three undrafted free agents to make the team.
He played 15 games with the Bucs in 2025, seeing action on five defensive snaps and 253 on special teams. Bullock totaled 10 tackles.
The Buccaneers are down to one unsigned draft pick.
Wide receiver Ted Hurst signed with the team on Friday. The third-round pick is the sixth of their seven picks to seal their four-year contracts in Tampa.
Second-round linebacker Josiah Trotter is now the only pick without a deal.
Hurst had 127 catches for 1,965 yards and 15 touchdowns in his final two seasons at Georgia State. He’ll join a receiver group led by Emeka Egbuka, Chris Godwin and Jalen McMillian.
The Buccaneers also announced that they have signed 14 undrafted free agents. They are Kansas quarterback Jalon Daniels, Georgia Tech wide receiver Eric Rivers Jr., LSU linebacker Jack Pyburn, Charlotte safety Ja’Qurious Conley, Rutgers tight end Kenny Fletcher Jr., Arizona cornerback Ayden Garnes, Duke defensive lineman Josiah Green, Kentucky punter Aidan Laros, Nebraska guard Henry Lutovski, Arizona defensive tackle DeShawn McKnight, UCF tackle Paul Rubelt, Army wide receiver Noah Short, and North Carolina State linebacker Caden Fordham.
The 49ers secured a significant addition to their offense in March by signing veteran receiver Mike Evans.
While Evans will be 33 in August, he was still considered one of the top talents available at receiver this offseason. The 2025 season was the first in Evans’ career that he did not reach 1,000 yards, having played only eight games due to injury.
Even as Evans tallied just 30 catches for 368 yards last year, the 49ers are confident he can continue to be effective in their offense in 2026.
“I mean, he’s a Hall of Fame wide receiver,” 49ers offensive coordinator Klay Kubiak said on Thursday, via David Bonilla of 49erswebzone.com. “He’s a one-on-one match-up that you can take advantage of when he’s on the field, and when he’s got one-on-one coverage, you want to get the ball to Mike. You feel like he’s going to win.
“He’s about as competitive as they come. He’s a guy who’s going to win his match-ups, and it’s just really cool to have that alpha type of player out on the field at that position for us again. … And we’re going to use him the way he’s been used his whole career, and hopefully, get a few more things out of him, too, along the way, as we get him in our program.”
A six-time Pro Bowler, Evans has recorded 866 catches for 13,052 yards with 108 touchdowns so far in his 12-year career.
The Buccaneers not only signed their top pick, Rueben Bain Jr., but they also got nearly their entire draft class under contract on Thursday.
The Bucs have signed third-round wide receiver Ted Hurst, fourth-round cornerback Keionte Scott, fifth-round defensive tackle DeMonte Capehart, fifth-round offensive guard Billy Schrauth and sixth-round tight end Bauer Sharp, Jenna Laine of ESPN reports.
Those six signings leave only second-round linebacker Josiah Trotter unsigned.
All six signed four-year deals.
The Buccaneers have their top draft pick under contract.
Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times reports that edge rusher Rueben Bain has signed his rookie deal with the team. It’s a four-year contract and, as is the case with all first-round picks, the team holds an option for a fifth season.
The four-year deal is worth over $23.76 million with a signing bonus of just over $13.74 million.
Bain was usually projected to be drafted before the Bucs were on the board at No. 15, but he wound up sliding to that spot in what the Buccaneers believe was a piece of good luck. They benefitted from another slide in 1995 when they picked up defensive tackle Warren Sapp and Bain might have been channelling that common thread when he donned Sapp’s jersey for Thursday’s arrival to Tampa’s rookie minicamp.
Former Buccaneers (for the 2025 offseason and training camp) safety Shilo Sanders interjected himself into the NFL narrative last week, with misogynistic comments directed at Mary Kay Cabot of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
That puts him on the radar screen for relevant news. Here’s something, from Brent Schrotenboer of USA Today.
Shilo has a pending bankruptcy case, arising from $11 million in debt. The debt traces to an incident from 2015, when a then-15-year-old Shilo Sanders allegedly assaulted and severely injured a security guard at his school. The security guard sued Shilo and his parents. (His father is Colorado coach Deion sanders.)
Shilo’s parents eventually were dropped from the lawsuit, but a default judgment of $11.89 million was entered against Shilo Sanders in 2022, after Shilo failed to show up for the trial of the case.
Shilo Sanders filed for bankruptcy protection in an effort to have the debt discharged. A trial is set for later this year on the question of whether the debt can be discharged. If it was a “willful and malicious injury,” it can’t be discharged.
Shilo Sanders has claimed he acted in self-defense.
Most recently, the parties have been arguing over the evidence that can be introduced into the record at the looming trial, with Shilo’s lawyer trying to exclude evidence regarding his history of discipline in unrelated matters.
The trial on this specific issue is currently set for August 31.
Undrafted in 2025, Shilo Sanders signed with the Buccaneers. He was released during the preseason and has not signed with another team.
Jameis Winston is going to eat a W this summer. Along with the rest of the letters that spell, “World Cup.”
Fox has announced that Winston will serve as a correspondent for its coverage of the FIFA World Cup, to be played throughout North America in June and July.
Winston, the first pick in the 2015 NFL draft, has gone from five-year starter in Tampa Bay to backup who periodically gets the call to play.
From 2015 to 2019, Winston started 70 games with the Buccaneers. Since 2020, he has started 19 games while playing for the Saints, Browns, and Giants.
On the media side, he first rose to prominence while working for Fox during the week of Super Bowl LIX. He also appeared on the Netflix broadcast of MLB’s opening night in 2026.
Winston will be able to waltz into a media career, whenever he’s ready to make the transition. For now, Fox seems to be the favorite to eventually turn temporary assignments into something more permanent.
For many years, Mike Evans was the leader of the Buccaneers’ receivers room.
But that is no longer the case, with Evans electing to sign a three-year deal with the 49ers in March.
Tampa Bay still has plenty of talent at wideout, including 2025 first-round pick Emeka Egbuka. In an interview with Up & Adams this week, Egbuka noted that while the Bucs feel the loss of Evans, they have the players to fill the void.
“Obviously, I think there’s a passing of the torch, and it needs to be received by someone,” Egbuka said. “I think that our management — our G.M., our owners, and everything like that — they’ve done a great job of bringing guys in who are up to the task. So, obviously, they drafted me last year. But we have Chris Godwin, we have Jalen McMillan, and we have a bunch of guys who are ready to make an impact. We just drafted a wide receiver [Ted Hurst out of Georgia State], so we’re really excited to see what he can do.
“But obviously, we’re feeling the effects of Mike being gone. He’s so loved within the building, within the Tampa community. There’s nothing but love for him. There’s no hard feelings or anything. We all believe he’s going to do amazing things in San Francisco. But, yeah, there’s a little bit of a passing of the torch, and handoff, and I think everybody in our room is up to the task.”
Egbuka, in particular, seems up to the task of leading Tampa Bay’s wideouts, telling Kay Adams that he feels leadership is “always something that’s come very natural to me.”
“I remember in draft prep and everything like that, when the Bucs were evaluating me, that was something that they put a lot of high emphasis on, was me being a leader, and stepping into leadership roles,” Egbuka said. “I was a captain at Ohio State — been a captain on pretty much every football team I’ve been a part of. So, it’s definitely something that’s always come naturally to me when I was younger.”
Egbuka, 23, caught 63 passes for 938 yards with six touchdowns as a rookie in 2025.
