Teams Tampa Bay Buccaneers - Pewter Pirates

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Tom Brady remains on Buccaneers’ roster as week ends​

Posted by Charean Williams on February 4, 2022, 5:31 PM EST

The NFL transactions report had only one insignificant listing Friday: The Cowboys signed kicker Chris Naggar.

That means Tom Brady remains on the Buccaneers’ roster, three days after announcing his retirement.

The team can place Brady on the reserve/retired list or release him depending on what the sides work out. Tony Romo, for instance, requested his release from the Cowboys, who relinquished rights to him by cutting him in 2017. That allowed Romo an easier return to the NFL if he had ever wanted to come back from retirement.

Since he has another year on his contract, Brady’s rights will remain with the Bucs if the team places him on the reserve/retired list. (His deal also calls for void years in 2023, 2024 and 2025 for salary-cap purposes.)

The Bucs owed Brady a payment of $15 million in deferred signing bonus money Friday, but he technically owes the team $16 million in signing bonus money paid to him that he didn’t earn. General Manager Jason Licht said Tuesday he was working with Brady’s representation to come to an agreement.

“That’s really a moot point,” Licht said. “We’ve been talking with Tom’s agents. We have a great relationship with Don Yee and Steve Dubin and we’ve been talking about that. That’s really a moot point, and we knew that if we were in this scenario that we would be able to work that out. Besides, I don’t like to talk about contracts publicly, but we’ll be able to work that out.”
 

The Tampa Bay Times's John Romano believes the Bucs could bring back free agent Jameis Winston to replace Tom Brady this offseason.​

Winston spent his first five seasons in Tampa and is likely open to returning given his ties to the Bucs. Tampa has limited cap space and would need to mortgage draft picks to bring in any of the veteran quarterbacks on the trade market. That makes Winston a potential team-friendly replacement that allows the Bucs to compete next year. Winston, who's expected to be ready for Week 1 after undergoing ACL surgery in November, is the headline of this year's free agent class after a career-high 102.8 rating and 14:3 TD/INT ratio in seven starts before landing on IR. The 28-year-old led the NFL in passing yards (5,109) in his final year with the Bucs.
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SOURCE: Tampa Bay Times
Feb 5, 2022, 10:39 AM ET
 

Buccaneers’ eventual Tom Brady roster move will be a major factor in his potential unretirement​

Posted by Mike Florio on February 9, 2022, 7:06 AM EST

The Buccaneers have yet to move quarterback Tom Brady from their roster. And for good reason.

Before June 1, any effort to shift Brady from the active-roster to a non-rostered status would result in a $32 million cap charge for 2022. After June 1, the Bucs can divide the hit, with $8 million landing in 2022 and $24 million in 2023.

That’s why Saints quarterback Drew Brees didn’t officially retire until after June 1 last year. It’s a favor to the team, one that minimizes a potential cap mess.

But once the Bucs move Brady from the roster, the label utilized by the team becomes critical. If he’s placed on the reserve-retired list, Tampa Bay controls his rights moving forward. If he’s released, Brady becomes a free agent, able to sign with any team at any time.

Before the trade deadline, any effort by Brady to emerge from retirement in 2022 or 2023 or whenever would require his next team to strike a trade with the Bucs, like the Bucs did when acquiring tight end Rob Gronkowski from the Patriots in 2020. After the trade deadline, Brady’s only path to a new team would entail securing his outright release. At that point, however, he’d have to pass through waivers.

After Week 13, even a desire to return to Tampa Bay for a late-season run would require Brady to be released and to pass through waivers before being re-signed. That was one of the overlooked wrinkles in New Orleans’ effort to get Brees to come back for a late-season game against the Dolphins. He couldn’t have, at that point in the schedule, instantly emerged from reserve-retired. The Saints would have had to release his rights, and then to hope that no one else blocked the move by putting in a claim.

Brady should want to be released. By not making his retirement officially official for now (no press conference, no activation of the pension process, etc.), the Bucs can likely get away with keeping him around until June 2. In exchange for not backing them into a $32 million corner, however, Brady should seek — and he should receive — a promise that they’ll simply release him in June. Which would set the stage for Brady joining any team he chooses, whenever he chooses to play again.

And, yes, that’s the reality we must now confront. Less than a week after Brady’s retirement watch ended, his unretirement watch has begun. All because he kicked the door open, only days after it was supposedly closed.
 

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Bruce Arians not happy with report of rift with Tom Brady​

Posted by Mike Florio on February 19, 2022, 6:40 PM EST

If you believe the rumors that have been making the rounds, Bruce Arians managed to do in only two years what it took Bill Belichick two decades to accomplish. And Arians doesn’t appreciate talk of a rift between himself and retired (for now) quarterback Tom Brady.

Former NFL lineman Rich Ohrnberger, who made waves on Friday by tweeting a phony story about Patrick Mahomes that someone had been sending to multiple media members in the hopes of getting someone to bite, also tweeted that Arians had a habit of showing up after rehabbing a partially torn Achilles tendon in the morning and taking “the red pen” to the game plan that had been developed by offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich and Brady, and that the two men “felt undermined, there was tension.”

In comments made to Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times, Arians called the report “such bullshit.” Arians added that it “pisses me off,” noting that Leftwich “could corroborate this, too.”

Arians quibbled with some of Ohrnberger’s details, and Arians denied that the coach interferes with the game planning.

“First of all, I don’t rehab my Achilles in the morning,” Arians told Stroud. “I will go over the game plans and add things, but I don’t delete anything. I don’t have to because they do such a good job. . . . I’ll see some things. Add some things. It’s an awesome collaboration, one of the best I’ve ever been around.”
Arians also opted to challenge the literal terms used by Ohrnberger, saying that Arians never used a red pen on any game plan. “I never heard of that one,” Arians told Stroud. “That was the best one ever. That’s pretty graphic to not know what the **** you’re talking about.”

In fairness to Ohrnberger, he likely wasn’t literally referring to the use of a red pen. It’s a figure of speech, and it’s kind of amazing that, in nearly 70 years on earth, Arians had never heard it before.

Regardless of why it happened, Brady is retired. Sort of. And if/when the Buccaneers make a major investment in a veteran replacement, it will be very difficult for the Buccaneers to re-embrace Brady if he decides to return. They’ll have to cut him or trade him.

Nothing Arians says changes that. If anything, it seems as if he’s maybe protesting a little too much.
 

Rich Ohrnberger doubles down on claims of Tom Brady, Bruce Arians dysfunction​

Posted by Mike Florio on February 20, 2022, 8:21 AM EST

Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians tried to shout down former NFL player Rich Ohrnberger. It didn’t work.

After Arians’s characteristically profane (and I’m fine with that) response to Ohrnberger’s Friday claim of a tense and souring relationship in Tampa between Arians and quarterback Tom Brady, Ohrnberger doubled down with a series of Saturday night tweets.

Ohrnberger began by explaining that Brady and offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich were “responsible for the entirety of the offensive game plan,” and that Arians would take a figurative red pen to their work. Ohrnberger also said that Brady and Leftwich had “major disagreements . . . on strategy, especially regarding the run game.”

Ohrnberger added that, “at a certain point during the 2021 season, Brady successfully seized control of the offensive game plan, adjusting play calls he didn’t believe would work.” Added Ohrnberger: “Additionally, there was a feeling of resentment inside the building toward Arians.”

More Ohrnberger: “While others worked around the clock in Tampa to build a winner, Head Football Coach Bruce Arians had a much lighter work schedule, per multiple impregnable sources.”

Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times responded to Ohrnberger by contending that Arians took the job on the condition of not game planning, that he had no figurative red pen, that it was always Leftwich and Brady doing the game planning, and that it worked.

Ohrnberger replied by reiterating that his sources are “impregnable,” and by pointing out that on-field success isn’t an indication that “relationships are/were on steady footing.”

Although Ohrnberger recently was duped (and admitted it) into tweeting that Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes told his fiancée and brother not to attend games because of their in-stadium antics, Ohrnberger backed off after he realized he’d been fooled. On this point, Ohrnberger may indeed have impregnable sources.

First, he played with Brady for three years in New England. While I’m not saying one of his sources was Brady, (1) they clearly know each other and (2) Brady would be an “impregnable” source.

Second, the folks at JoeBucsFan.com have explained that Ohrnberger said on his radio show that he was “talking to a guy who’s pretty embedded with the Bucs,” and that Ohrnberger played college football at Penn State with Buccaneers assistant coach A.Q. Shipley.

How’s the relationship between Ohrnberger and Shipley? A 2008 article in the Penn State school paper described Shipley as one of Ohrnberger’s closet friends on the team. The following year, Ohrnberger posed as Shipley for a 15-minute conference call with reporters.

In 2018, Shipley appeared on Ohrnberger’s radio show, and Ohrnberger opened the interview with this: “Teammate of mine, a guy who I love. This is one of my brothers.”

While it’s considered taboo among reporters to guess their sources (that’s never stopped me), Ohrnberger isn’t a reporter. Also, he opened the door to this kind of stuff by dropping bombs on Bucco Bruce and calling the sources “impregnable.”

Look at it this way. Given the relationship between Ohrnberger and Shipley, common sense suggests that, even if Ohrnberger didn’t hear it first from Shipley, he surely would have run it by him.

We can choose to believe or to not believe whatever we want. I believe Ohrnberger. As noted last night, I also believe Arians protested Ohrnberger’s claims just a little too much.
 

Report: Buccaneers will play a home game in Germany this season​

Posted by Michael David Smith on February 25, 2022, 1:48 PM EST

The NFL will play a regular-season game in Germany for the first time in 2022, and now we know which team is giving up a home game to go there.

The Buccaneers will be the home team for the Germany game, according to Ben Fischer of Sports Business Journal.

There’s been no word on the date of the game or who the Bucs’ opponent will be. The Bucs’ home opponents in 2022 are the Falcons, Ravens, Panthers, Bengals, Packers, Chiefs, Rams, Saints and Seahawks.

The game will be played in Munich, at the home stadium of the Bayern Munich soccer team. The NFL has agreed to play in Munich in 2022 and 2024, and in Frankfurt, Germany, in 2023 and 2025.

The Bucs are one of the teams that staked a claim for international marketing rights in Germany, and now they’ll get a big chance to try to appeal to the German fans.
 
GG.exe said:

Report: Buccaneers will play a home game in Germany this season​

Posted by Michael David Smith on February 25, 2022, 1:48 PM EST

The NFL will play a regular-season game in Germany for the first time in 2022, and now we know which team is giving up a home game to go there.

The Buccaneers will be the home team for the Germany game, according to Ben Fischer of Sports Business Journal.

There’s been no word on the date of the game or who the Bucs’ opponent will be. The Bucs’ home opponents in 2022 are the Falcons, Ravens, Panthers, Bengals, Packers, Chiefs, Rams, Saints and Seahawks.

The game will be played in Munich, at the home stadium of the Bayern Munich soccer team. The NFL has agreed to play in Munich in 2022 and 2024, and in Frankfurt, Germany, in 2023 and 2025.

The Bucs are one of the teams that staked a claim for international marketing rights in Germany, and now they’ll get a big chance to try to appeal to the German fans.
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