The Buccaneers waived wide receiver Jaden Smith on Thursday, according to the NFL’s transactions wire.
Smith, 24, signed with the team as an undrafted free agent out of Nevada in 2025. He won a job with a tryout in the team’s rookie minicamp.
He was injured in training camp and started and finished his rookie season on injured reserve.
Smith also played college ball at Montana State and Tarleton State before finishing at Nevada. In 45 total games with those three programs, he caught 138 passes for 2,100 yards and 20 touchdowns.
After setting career highs with 62 catches and 849 yards in 2024, Smith earned All-Mountain West Conference honorable mention honors.
Veteran linebacker Anthony Walker will not be back for a 10th season in the NFL.
Walker announced his retirement on Thursday via a post on his Instagram account.
Walker played at Northwestern before being drafted by the Colts in the fifth round in 2017. He spent four seasons in Indianapolis and had 343 tackles, 3.5 sacks, three interceptions, a forced fumble and two fumble recoveries during his time with the team.
The Browns signed Walker in 2021 and he spent three seasons in Cleveland. He had 170 tackles, a sack, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery in that action.
Walker wrapped up his career by playing for the Dolphins and the Buccaneers over the last two seasons.
At a time when tanking has become a regular talking point for the NBA, the NFL’s approach typically goes like this: See no tanking, hear no tanking, speak no tanking.
Commissioner Roger Goodell was required to break from that habit on Tuesday, when he was asked about tanking at the press conference that capped the league’s annual meeting.
“We obviously keep a keen focus on it, but we don’t see any evidence of that,” Goodell told reporters, via Omar Kelly of the Miami Herald.
He then pivoted to touting the competitive nature of the league, with “players and coaches who want to win, and they’re out there playing their hearts out.”
But the issue isn’t whether the players and (for the most part) coaches want to win. Tanking can happen when owners and executives who make a business decision about the cost of finishing, say, 3-14 instead of 4-13, and the benefit of landing higher in the draft order.
Late in a lost season, a team can legitimately decide to evaluate younger players, or (as the Raiders did in 2025) shut down key players who had been playing with injuries.
Tanking doesn’t happen often in the NFL, in large part because the season is short enough to minimize the number of games during which a bad team is dog paddling through the final legs of a lost season. But it has happened.
The best example of blatant tanking came in 2014, when the Buccaneers removed a large chunk of their starters to start the second half of a Week 17 game against the Saints. At halftime, the Buccaneers led 20-7. The Saints won the game, 23-20.
“Heck, they lost a game on purpose to us at the end of the season prior with [head coach] Lovie Smith,” then-Saints coach Sean Payton said in 2020. “They forced Lovie [Smith] to take his starters out of the game so they could get the one spot to draft Jameis [Winston].”
Payton explained the dynamic during a subsequent visit to PFT Live. The Buccaneers put down the sword to clinch the Jameis pick by removing their best players. The players who were inserted into the game were trying to win. They weren’t good enough to fend off the Saints.
During that same appearance, Payton also mentioned the Eagles’ decision to replace quarterback Jalen Hurts with Nate Sudfeld in a Week 17 loss to Washington, which didn’t give Philadelphia the first overall pick but bumped them higher in the draft order for 2021.
“Nate has been here four years and I felt he deserved an opportunity to get some snaps,” Pederson said after that game.
The value of having a higher pick in the draft is indisputable. In most years, teams sacrifice significant assets to move higher. For the teams that are out of the playoff conversation, the easier — and cheaper — way to move higher is to lose meaningless games.
Still, the first rule of Tank Club is you do not talk about Tank Club. On Tuesday, Goodell had no choice, given the direct question he was asked. In answering the question, however, he flatly denied the existence of Tank Club.
It may not have many members. It may not have annual meetings. But it exists. And, for the most part, the NFL has been able to conceal it.
Why do you think there’s no draft lottery in the NFL? If the NFL had one, it would become yet another money-for-nothing offseason tentpole, with massive ratings for a prime-time game show aimed at fueling hope for failing teams.
But the mere existence of a lottery becomes an acknowledgement of the temptation to tank. As evidenced by Goodell’s response to Tuesday’s question, the league will never do that.
Even if it’s hiding in plain sight.
When it comes to the performative antics of Florida attorney general James Uthmeier, we’ve urged the league to respond with three words: “Bring it on.”
On Tuesday, Commissioner Roger Goodell essentially said just that during his press conference at the NFL annual meeting.
Asked whether the Rooney Rule, which Uthmeier has demanded the NFL ditch as to the three Florida-based teams, is going anywhere, Goodell was clear: “No. No, the Rooney Rule has been around a long time. We’ve evolved it, changed it. We’ll continue to do that as circumstances warrant.”
The league may be changing the Rooney Rule, but it won’t be changing it to create less diversity in the selection of candidates for key jobs.
“Well, the one thing that doesn’t change is our values,” Goodell said. “We believe that diversity has been a benefit to the National Football League. We are well aware of the laws, where the laws are changing or evolving. We think the Rooney Rule is consistent with those. We certainly will engage with the Florida [attorney general] or anybody else, as we have in the past, to talk about the policies and what they are.
“As you know, the Rooney Rule is not a hiring mandate. It’s intended to try to help and has been used by industries far beyond football, far beyond the United States, to help identify candidates — a diverse set of candidates — bring in better talent, and gives us an opportunity to hire the best talent. Ultimately, clubs make those decisions individually and those are, I think, principles of how we try to get better — bring in the best talent.”
Uthmeier believes otherwise, obviously. And he has given the NFL a deadline of May 1 to scrap the Rooney Rule as to the Dolphins, Jaguars, and Buccaneers, or risk potential enforcement action.
Call his bluff. Let him do it. Stick to your principles.
It sounds like that’s what the NFL plans to do.
Defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul returned to the Buccaneers late last season and he wouldn’t mind another trip down memory lane.
Pierre-Paul addressed a post on X.com to the Giants letting them know he’s interested in continuing to play. The Giants drafted Pierre-Paul 15th overall in 2010 and employed him for his first eight seasons in the NFL.
“I’m still available and ready to take on some OT’s and dominate in run-stop football the GIANTS WAY,” Pierre-Paul wrote. “Let’s make it happen, Giant Fans, Giant Nation Let’s go!! I know I know I know.”
Pierre-Paul won a Super Bowl with the Giants and another in his first four-year stint with the Bucs. He then played for new Giants head coach John Harbaugh with the Ravens in 2022, played sparingly for the Saints and Dolphins in 2023 and then saw action in three games for Tampa last year after sitting out the 2024 season.
Pierre-Paul is not the only former Giant and Raven to come up in conjunction with a possible Harbaugh reunion this week. Wide receiver Odell Beckham is looking to return to the league and Harbaugh said he’s open to the idea on Monday.
