The answer to one big question about wide receiver Chris Godwin’s offseason came last month when the Buccaneers re-signed him to a three-year contract ahead of free agency.
Bucs head coach Todd Bowles touched on the other big question during his media session at the league meetings on Tuesday. Godwin dislocated his ankle in midseason and missed the rest of the year, which makes his recovery something to watch as the Bucs move toward the 2025 season.
Bowles said on Tuesday that it remains to be seen when Godwin will be ready to go.
“I’m hoping he’s on the field, Week 1,” Bowles said, via a transcript from the team. “I’ll have more to know about that as the month goes on, see how he’s healing and getting running and practicing and everything else, but my hope is for him to be on the field Week 1.”
There will be plenty of time to update Godwin’s status before the Bucs hit the field and they’ll be hoping that everything lines up for him to be in the lineup right away.
Todd Bowles has won three division titles in three years at the Buccaneers head coach, but the path to the last two of them hasn’t been as smooth as he would have liked.
The Buccaneers opened well each season, but found themselves at 4-7 in 2023 and 4-6 last season before finishing strong to secure the NFC South. The first question at Bowles’s media availability at the league meetings on Tuesday concerned avoiding complacency and Bowles pointed to the midseason swoons as something that he will be focusing on when the team returns to work later this month.
“I feel good that we know how to win,” Bowles said, via a transcript from the team. “I don’t feel good about us finishing the season from a playoff aspect, and [in] the middle of the season, having a drought two years in a row. We’ve got to be better from that standpoint — from a coaching standpoint, from veterans holding everybody else accountable standpoint, which they do, but we’ve got to do a lot more of that. We’ve got to play not even better football at the end, but we’ve got to have killer instinct. We’ve got to try to blow people out and try to win the division instead of it going down to the last week.”
Bowles said “more accountability” was the way to create the kind of killer instinct he’s looking for and that he plans to talk to returning veterans to see what else they can pinpoint as a reason why they’ve had the recurring issues at midseason. It will take some time to see if the results of that work go well enough for Bowles to make it four straight crowns.
The Raiders are signing free agent linebacker Devin White to a one-year deal, Jordan Schultz of Fox Sports reports.
Raiders General Manager John Spytek was with the Bucs when they drafted White with the fifth overall pick in 2019. White also played with Raiders minority owner Tom Brady with the Bucs, winning a Super Bowl in the 2020 season.
White spent five years in Tampa, but his time there ended unceremoniously. He wanted a contract extension, and when he didn’t get it, White asked for a trade. In Week 15 of the 2023 season — his last with the Bucs — the team indicated he was a healthy scratch for a game against the Packers, prompting White to defend himself against accusations he quit on his team.
He signed a one-year deal with the Eagles worth up to $7.5 million a year ago, but the Eagles cut him Oct. 8 without White ever seeing the field. He signed with the Texans on Oct. 23 and played seven games, totaling 19 tackles while seeing action on 176 snaps.
White made the Pro Bowl in 2021 and has 585 career tackles with 23 sacks, 64 quarterback hits, three interceptions and 21 pass breakups.
Defensive lineman Eric Banks wasn’t able to get on the field for the Buccaneers last season, but he’ll give it another shot in 2025.
Greg Auman of Fox Sports reports that the Bucs have re-signed Banks. It’s a one-year deal worth a little over $1 million.
Banks spent the offseason with the Bucs in 2024, but a torn triceps in the summer kept him out for the entire regular season. He has seen game action with the Cardinals and Chargers and has four tackles in six appearances.
Logan Hall, Vita Vea, Calijah Kancey, Adam Gotsis, Greg Gaines, C.J. Brewer, and Mike Greene are also in the defensive line group in Tampa.
Sua Opeta will be back with the Buccaneers in 2025.
Tampa Bay announced on Tuesday that the club has re-signed the offensive lineman to a one-year deal.
Opeta, 28, suffered a knee injury during training camp last year and missed the entire season.
He had appeared in 38 games for the Eagles from 2020-2023 with 10 starts.
Opeta initially entered the league as an undrafted free agent out of Weber State in 2019 with Philadelphia.
Tom Brady says that in his final years in New England, he began to realize that he and coach Bill Belichick were not on the same page.
In a reflection on NFL free agency that he posted to his website, Brady talked about the only time he was a free agent: When he left New England for Tampa Bay five years ago. Brady says that in the final years of his final contract with the Patriots, he knew something had to change.
“For me, it was a creeping decision that lived passively in the back of mind for 2-3 years until March of 2020 when a whirlwind of a few days made me realize that a decision was coming sooner rather than later,” Brady wrote. “The reality was, after twenty years together, a natural tension had developed between where Coach Belichick and I were headed in our careers, and where the Patriots were moving as a franchise. It was the kind of tension that could only be resolved by some kind of split or one of us reassessing our priorities.”
Brady says that as he weighed leaving the Patriots, he listed his most important priorities and came to the conclusion that the Buccaneers were a better fit for him.
“What I ended up with was a list of about twenty things that I then ranked and graded on a weighted scale from 1 to 3,” Brady wrote. “The presence of skill players was a 3 in terms of importance, for example, and the Bucs graded out as a 3 because of guys like Mike Evans and Chris Godwin The same was true for the head coach. That was a 3 in importance, and Tampa scored a 3 with Bruce Arians. Game day weather was a 2, practice weather was a 3. Financial compensation was on the list, obviously, but it wasn’t first, it probably wasn’t even top 10, and it definitely didn’t rank as a 3 in importance. In the end, I chose Tampa, almost exactly five years ago now, because, in the aggregate, it graded out higher than New England along those twenty or so dimensions.”
The split with Belichick and the Patriots worked out well for Brady, who won the Super Bowl in his first year in Tampa Bay.
Buccaneers wide receiver Chris Godwin said after re-signing that he came close to leaving in free agency but decided that Tampa is home for him. Tampa Bay General Manager Jason Licht says Godwin ultimately decided to give the Bucs a hometown discount.
Licht said on WDAE that many teams wanted to sign Godwin and one team made it clear to him that it would beat whatever the Bucs’ best offer was. Licht said Godwin took less from the Bucs in an effort to help them fit other players under the salary cap.
“There were several teams that inquired but there was one that kept writing him blank checks,” Licht said. “We got to a point of what we could do in order to keep everything together and add some pieces here, and he took it.”
Licht did not name that team, but the Patriots are widely believed to have made Godwin a very lucrative offer. Licht said Godwin showed by taking less to help the team keep its roster intact showed what kind of person he is.
“A man of character,” Licht said. “We’re so fortunate to have him.”
Godwin has played his entire career in Tampa Bay since they drafted him in 2017, and now he’s locked in for three more years.
Less than 15 minutes into free agency (our story posted at 12:14 p.m. ET), the Buccaneers landed edge rusher Haason Reddick on a one-year, $14 million deal. G.M. Jason Licht explained this week on WDAE radio that the Bucs believe 2024 was an aberration for Reddick, and that he can get back to being an elite player.
“He’s such a freak, freak athlete and he really knows how to get after the quarterback,” Licht said, via JoeBucsFan.com.
“And, you know, [50] sacks in four years — just one year removed from that string that he had where he was an elite guy — and during the [2024] season, it was just kind of a bizarre year for him as he explained with the Jets. But when we knew that he was going to be a free agent, and we had talked several times internally that if he hits free agency or when he does, that this guy might be something that’s worth, you know, betting on. Because he’s going to be very hungry to prove to everybody that he is still the same player that he was before last year.”
Licht confirmed that Reddick was Tampa Bay’s first choice at the edge rusher position. And given the extreme speed with which the deal was done, it’s obvious that the usual pre-free agency tampering resulted in no team making him a significant, multi-year offer.
One could be coming in Tampa.
“He’s very, very determined to prove to everybody that last year was a fluke, that he’s still the same player,” Licht said. “He’s a great guy. He’s going to be a great fit. He can already sense what the locker room is like. And he’s just one of those guys that you like to be direct with. . . . He likes to hear the truth. And the truth was, ‘Hey, you’re going to love your team, you’re going to love your teammates, and we have a history here of rewarding people after they come in on these one-year, prove-it deals. And there’s a chance that we can do that here with you.’”
Reddick, 30, was a first-round pick of the Cardinals in 2017. After four years in Arizona, he spent one season with the Panthers, two with the Eagles, and one (sort of) with the Jets.
The Giants are done waiting on Aaron Rodgers.
With Rodgers visiting Pittsburgh on Friday, the Giants have signed veteran quarterback Jameis Winston. Winston has confirmed the NFL Media report.
He joined Tommy DeVito as the only two quarterbacks on the Giants’ roster. They’ll surely add more, possibly through the draft.
Winston recently visited the Giants, along with veterans Russell Wilson and Joe Flacco.
The first pick in the 2015 draft, Winston spent five years with the Buccaneers, four with the Saints, and one with the Browns. He has 105 regular-season appearances with 87 starts. His record as a starter is 36-51.
Winston has thrown 154 touchdown passes, with 111 interceptions.
He has become an engaging and colorful personality. He might be the kick in the ass the Giants need.
The move most likely removed the Giants from the running for Aaron Rodgers, limiting his option to the Steelers, maybe the Vikings, and possibly retirement.
The Cardinals announced a pair of signings on Friday.
One was the previously reported agreement they reached with former Bears cornerback Jaylon Jones and the other was a deal with offensive lineman Royce Newman. Both players signed one-year deals in Arizona.
Newman spent three seasons with the Packers before joining the Buccaneers for the 2024 campaign. Newman only made one regular season appearance for Tampa, however.
Newman was a 2021 fourth-round pick and he started 16 games at right guard during his rookie season. He played in every game for Green Bay over the next two seasons, but only started eight more times.
