FAB 3. The Bucs Aren’t Trading Howard

As Tampa Bay enters the final 10-game stretch after its bye week, the talk of town has been how little the Bucs have used tight end O.J. Howard on offense as a weapon. Bucs wide receivers Chris Godwin and Mike Evans lead the team in targets with 55 apiece, while Howard is a distant fourth with 18 – three behind third-down back Dare Ogunbowale.

Through six games in Bruce Arians and Byron Leftwich’s offense, Howard

Bucs TE O.J. Howard – Photo by: Roger McQueen/PR

has just 13 catches for 176 yards (13.5 avg.) and no touchdowns. Through the first six games of the 2018 season, Howard had 20 catches for 351 yards (17.6 avg.) and two touchdowns. Even during Howard’s rookie campaign he had 11 receptions for 205 yards (18.6 avg.) and three TDs.

So naturally there was some speculation that the Bucs might be interested in trading Howard if he’s not playing a prominent role on offense. MMQB.com’s Albert Breer reported that New England had offered the Bucs a second-round pick for Howard this week, but given the Patriots’ likely winning the AFC East and perhaps making yet another Super Bowl, their second-round pick would likely be at the end of the round.

Wisely, Tampa Bay general manager Jason Licht turned down Bill Belichick’s offer, but Howard was flattered by the Patriots’ interest.

“Yeah, that’s awesome,” Howard said. “At the end of the day, for me, it’s knowing your skill set and I’ve known what kind of player I was for a long time. Teams know that, the Bucs know it. It’s one of those things that’s not a secret, they like players like that, so it wasn’t a surprise at all.

“It’s no secret, I feel like I have a great talent with what I can do playing the tight end position, with mismatches and creating opportunities and a lot of teams know that. That’s where that comes from and I always felt that way from day one, that I was that type of player, so it was no secret on that.”

The Bucs have a first-round pick invested in Howard, who was the 19th overall selection in 2017. It would take a high first-round pick to get Licht even interested in considering parting ways with his underachieving – and underused – tight end.

At 6-foot-6, 251 pounds with 4.51 speed, Howard is a physical freak, who is under contract next year and possibly in 2021 if the Bucs pick up his fifth-year option, which will likely be around $10 million. In 2022, Tampa Bay could even use the franchise tag on Howard, who will be 28 years old at that time, as the amount for tight ends is the lowest among all offensive players.

Here are the franchise tag numbers for offensive players in 2019:

QB: $24.865 million

RB: $11.214 million

WR: $16.787 million

TE: $10.387 million

OL: $14.067 million

Bucs TE O.J. Howard – Photo by: Getty Images

Howard, whose cap value is just $3,025,870 this year and $3,530,182 next year, can be a very affordable weapon for the Bucs for the next four seasons. He still has 10 games left in this season to produce in Arians’ offense, and the fact that Leftwich called a tight end screen pass for Howard that picked up 30 yards and set up a touchdown run by Ronald Jones II in Tampa Bay’s last game was promising.

“Hopefully there are more opportunities for me to make plays,” Howard said. “That’s what I am – a playmaker. I just need the opportunities and I think that the coaching staff is doing a great job at trying to find ways. We had a couple of weeks and when we get our game plan up and running I’m pretty sure we’ll have opportunities.”

Yet Howard has been his own worst enemy at times, as he leads the Bucs with three drops in six games, including one in the season opener at San Francisco that bounced off his hands and turned into an interception, and two in Tampa Bay’s last game at Carolina.

“Part of it is game planning, part of it is opportunities in the game,” Arians said. “He’s got to catch it – he dropped two balls last week. … But the other [part] is opportunity. A lot of stuff that we’ve had for him in the red zone just hasn’t happened. We go into a game with 100-and-some plays and the game dictates sometimes what happens. But part of the time when we have game planned for him, they take it out of the way.”

Howard knows that he has to eliminate the drops and make the most of the opportunities when they come his way.

“There have been plays that I could have made that I didn’t make,” Howard said. “For me, that’s the thing, I strive to do – make plays. I’ve had a few drops and that’s what I’m working on. I stay after practice every day to get the opportunity to work on that so it won’t happen again. It’s football. It’s a game of failure, but it’s about how you respond.”

O.J Howard – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

Although his performance through the first six games has been underwhelming, Howard remains a big part of Tampa Bay’s offensive plans for this year and years to come. The NFL trading deadline will come and go next Tuesday with Howard remaining in red and pewter. If the Bucs do want to explore trading him after the 2019 season over, Howard’s trade value will be just as high in the offseason as it is right now. Arians and Licht are anxious to see how well he performs over the 10 remaining games on the schedule.

And don’t expect the Bucs to trade any other players away, either. Tampa Bay is already due for a third-round compensatory pick in 2020, and the Bucs already have the league’s second-youngest roster with an average age of 25.4 years. Part of the reason for the team’s struggles is mistakes coming from young, inexperienced players.

If anything, the Bucs need to be a more veteran team in 2020 in order to win close games and make the playoffs – not get even younger by trading away good players and stockpiling draft picks.