On an appearance on Tuesday’s Good Morning Football on NFL Network, Bucs general manager Jason Licht spoke to Peter Schrager and revealed that Tampa Bay is still open to Tom Brady’s return. If the future Hall of Famer changes his mind and wants to come out of retirement and play during he 2022 season, the Bucs are ready.

“We’ll see what the future holds,” Licht said. “Let’s just say we’ll leave the light on. We always leave the light on for a guy like Tom Brady.”

“Tom is a special player, special person. We’ve had a great two years here. Right now we’re trying to make our plans to move forward – if that’s the case we need that we need to move forward on. There are a lot of things we still have to get. We have some time here, well, a couple of weeks before free agency starts. You’ve got the draft and you’ve got the post-draft. We’ve added players after the draft in the past – some significant impact players after the draft and after free agency. So we’re still in that process right now.”

Bucs QB Tom Brady and GM Jason Licht

It almost sounded like Licht was making a sales pitch to Brady – or perhaps the Bucs fan base – that Tampa Bay’s roster will be stocked again in 2022, although some departures in free agency will be inevitable. Licht said that the Bucs have enough to talent to compete and win this year, and that the team is looking to re-sign a lot of its own free agents.

“We still feel like we have a chance to win this year,” Licht said. “We’re in a division where we think we can compete. We have a lot of players that are free agents and we have a lot of priorities. It just depends on how the puzzle fits together. We want to win this year and compete this year for the title, but we also want to keep our eye on the future, too. We don’t want to mortgage too much too soon. It just depends on what the market bears. We’re going to try to bring a lot of these guys back.”

Licht talked about how Brady favorably changed the culture in Tampa Bay in helping the Bucs not only win a Super Bowl in 2020, but also foster a winning attitude that began under head coach Bruce Arians in 2019.

“Tom has brought the best out of everybody,” Licht said.

Licht spoke about quarterback Kyle Trask, last year’s second-round pick, and how he learned from Brady and developed behind the scenes during his rookie season. Trask is currently the only quarterback under contract right now in Tampa Bay.

“Kyle was a really productive, prolific SEC quarterback,” Licht said. “We took him last year in the second round and we felt like we got really good value. We love everything that we’ve seen from him.

“He’s got a good arm, he’s very smart and he works very hard. I’m very excited to see what he can do for us this offseason.”

The Bucs general manager also said that the retirement of Pro Bowl left guard Ali Marpet didn’t necessarily catch the team off guard this offseason.

“We’ve heard for a little while that he was contemplating this,” Licht said. “It didn’t come as a complete surprise on Sunday, but I’m just happy for him. He goes out on top.”