FAB 2. Inside The Bucs’ New Free Agency Strategy

Buccaneers general manager Jason Licht has finally figured out what a few teams like New England, Philadelphia and Baltimore have already figured out.

Free agency has become a detriment to the NFL.

Why? It’s impossible to try and build a winning team through free agency.

Supplement a team with a few key free agents? Yes.

But for a losing franchise to attempt to construct a winning squad with players from other teams that ultimately didn’t want those players enough to keep them is a folly the Bucs have been taking part in for over the past decade or so.

Jason Licht & Lovie Smith – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

For every quality free agent hit like Vincent Jackson there has been a Derrick Ward, Eric Wright, Anthony Collins, Michael Johnson, Josh McCown, Bruce Carter, Chris Baker, Nick Folk, Chandler Catanzaro and a Vinny Curry that doesn’t live up to expectations and aren’t worth the money. Clearly more misses than hits in free agency.

Decades ago, the death knell for NFL teams used to be when franchises like San Diego, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Oakland selected the wrong quarterback near the top of the NFL Draft before the NFL rookie salary cap was in place because those contracts would put a strangehold around those teams’ cap situations for nearly a decade.

Drafting Ryan Leaf, Tim Couch, Akili Smith and JaMarcus Russell and the salary cap hell that ensued from those failed quarterbacks played a role in sinking those teams for the better part of a decade before the league’s rookie salary cap was put in place in 2011 to help teams avoid this pitfall.

Now, it’s ridiculous free agent contracts that are choking teams’ salary cap space – and the Bucs know it.

Left tackle Trent Brown, a former seventh-round pick by San Francisco in 2015, was traded to New England where he came out of nowhere to start all 16 games at left tackle last season while winning a Super Bowl before cashing in with a monster deal in free agency with Oakland. Brown has just 44 starts in four years and hasn’t sniffed a Pro Bowl, yet signed a four-year, $66 million contract that features $36.75 million in guaranteed money.

Brown is far from being the best left tackle in the league – in fact, Pro Football Focus rated him as the 32nd best offensive tackle last year. Yet he’s now the league’s highest-paid lineman, making an average of $16.5 million per year.

Unless Brown turns into a perennial Pro Bowler with the Raiders, that’s an insane amount of money to pay a one-year wonder – and it makes Donovan Smith’s $13.8 million average per year salary look like a steal.

Bucs MLB Kwon Alexander – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

Licht wisely let middle linebacker Kwon Alexander, who is coming off an ACL tear, limp off to San Francisco to make $13.5 million per year. The Bucs let one-dimensional slot receiver Adam Humphries head off to Tennessee for $9 million per year.

Kevin Minter will likely replace Alexander at inside linebacker in base defense for a $735,000 cap charge, and Deone Bucannon will replace Alexander in nickel defense for $2.5 million. The Bucs got two healthy players for a total of $3.235 million instead of getting an injured one in Alexander – and will save over $10 million in cap space this year in the process. Time will tell if the tandem of Minter and Bucannon can be just as effective as Alexander – if not more.

At wide receiver, Licht traded malcontent DeSean Jackson to free up $10 million and signed Breshad Perriman to replace him as an outside receiver for just $4 million. Chris Godwin will play the Larry Fitzgerald slot receiver role in Bruce Arians’ offense, which calls for a bigger, more physical receiver than Dirk Koetter’s slot receiver role over the last four years that was occupied by Humphries.

Instead of keeping Jackson’s $10 million base salary and paying $9 million to keep Humphries, the Bucs got bigger at both receiver spots opposite Mike Evans, which should help Jameis Winston, and save $14.1 due to Perriman’s $4 million and Godwin’s $875,041 cap charge in 2019. Time will tell if Perriman and Godwin can be more productive than Jackson and Humphries were last year.

After years of trying to “win the offseason,” I’ll credit Licht for trying a different approach. Out of the Bucs’ 2014 free agent class, which featured Johnson, Collins, McCown, Alterraun Verner, Brandon Myers and Clinton McDonald, it was McDonald, who was the least heralded, that wound up being the best free agent addition.

Former Bucs WR Joe Jurevicius – Photo by: Getty Images

Jon Gruden and Rich McKay helped supplement Tampa Bay’s offense with similarly unheralded free agent additions in 2002, including the likes of left tackle Roman Oben, left guard Kerry Jenkins, running back Michael Pittman, wide receiver Joe Jurevicius, tight ends Ken Dilger and Rickey Dudley, in addition to defensive end Greg Spires.

Those non-splash free agent signings supplemented a Pro Bowl-caliber core that included the likes of defensive tackle Warren Sapp, linebacker Derrick Brooks, cornerback Ronde Barber, fullback Mike Alstott, safety John Lynch and defensive end Simeon Rice that despite being quite good, wasn’t good enough to get a home playoff game in 2001 or win at Philadelphia that year.

Fans love the excitement from splash moves in free agency and the thought of their team signing some so-called impact players in March, but history shows it rarely works. Licht’s approach moving forward is drafting more stars like Evans, guard Ali Marpet, tight end O.J. Howard and Godwin, and signing unheralded role players to one-year prove-it deals, which should give those players like Perriman, Bucannon, Minter and linebacker Shaquil Barrett the incentive to ball out in 2019 with the hope of striking it rich in free agency in 2020.

With the Bucs’ salary cap getting squeezed a bit more with every big re-signing – most recently left tackle Donovan Smith and likely Winston next year – director of football administration Mike Greenberg is doing the wise thing in signing a lot of Tampa Bay’s free agents to one-year deals that won’t affect the 2020 cap. This approach gives the Bucs the freedom to reward only the free agents that shine in 2019 in Tampa Bay.

History shows that out of Perriman, Minter, Bucannon, Barrett, running back Peyton Barber and cornerback De’Vante Harris that not all of those recently signed players will step up and have a great year. The good news is that the front office can pick and choose which free agents to sign, and which ones to let walk and possibly sign elsewhere for a compensatory pick the following year.

Patriots HC Bill Belichick and former DC Matt Patricia – Photo by: Getty Images

Patriots head coach Bill Belichick knew that defensive end Trey Flowers, a former fourth-round pick who has 4.9 speed, was not worth the ridiculous contract he received from Detroit. At the urging of head coach Matt Patricia, who used to be the Patriots defensive coordinator, the Lions signed Flowers to a gaudy five-year deal worth $90 million, including $40 million in guaranteed money with $28 million of that coming in the form of a signing bonus.

All that – an average of $18 million per year – for an above average defensive end who has averaged 54 tackles and seven sacks over the last three years – without registering more than 7.5 sacks a season and not making a Pro Bowl. Just ridiculous.

I would bet – and I would assume Licht and his front office would bet, too – that there will be three or four edge rushers taken in this year’s draft that will be more productive in a year or two than Flowers is right now. And those young edge rushers will be making about $13 million to $15 million less per year than Flowers will be, too.

Unless Flowers takes his game to a new level in Detroit, this signing will play a role in squeezing Detroit’s salary cap over the next couple of years and possibly play a role in Patricia’s eventual departure, too.

The new outrageous free agent deal has become the old ridiculous first-round bad quarterback deal – deals that will stall franchises mired in mediocrity and kill coaches.

Bucs DT Chris Baker, GM Jason Licht & WR DeSean Jackson – Photo by Cliff Welch/PR

Don’t believe me? What do you think the signings of Johnson, McCown, Collins, Verner, Baker, Jackson, Curry, Folk and Catanzaro have done to the Bucs – and former head coaches Lovie Smith and Koetter – whose record is just 27-53 games over the past five years?

The Bucs want to break the cycle avoid these types of scenarios in free agency. They actually want to avoid free agency altogether for the most part, focus on drafting and developing young players with cheaper rookie contracts, and acquiring some compensatory draft picks along the way, which I’ll discuss in the next section of SR’s Fab 5.

This new strategy can work as long if Licht can produce better drafts and if Arians’ coaching staff lives up to its billing and develops that drafted talent.