Tampa Bay stayed busy making two additions and allowing Ryan Fitzpatrick to move on.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers continue to shop in free agency as they made a couple of under the radar moves over the weekend singing offensive lineman Earl Watford and linebacker Shaq Barrett to one-year contracts.
Bucs Head Coach Bruce Arians drafted Watford while with Arizona in 2014 out of Temple.
Watford has played with the Cardinals, Bears, and most recently spent 2018 with the Cleveland Browns playing in 13 games.
Watford has started 22 games in his career and will get the opportunity to potentially start at right guard for the Bucs in 2019 as he will compete with Caleb Benenoch in training camp.
In Watford, the Bucs added a versatile player who’s played both right tackle and the two offensive guard positions in his carer. This is something that Jason Licht seems to like in his offensive linemen.
The second addition made by the Bucs was the signing of linebacker Shaq Barrett to a one year contract.
Barrett was the backup to Von Miller in Denver the last five seasons and has 14 sacks in his career.
Barrett joins Jason Pierre-Paul, Carl Nassib, and Noah Spence as edge rushers already on the Bucs roster.
The plan will likely be for Barrett to compete with Spence for the starting job at outside linebacker.
With the Bucs switching to a 3-4 base defense it’s imperative that the Bucs have plenty of edge rushers that can get to the quarterback. Barrett is just one piece to that puzzle.
In other news, the Bucs backup quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick has officially left the team.
The 36-year-old veteran signed a two year 11 million dollar contract to be the Miami Dolphins starting quarterback.
The Dolphins traded Ryan Tannehill to Tennessee to open a spot for Fitzpatrick and will now be targeting a quarterback in the upcoming draft with their 13th pick.
Bucs head coach Bruce Arians had said earlier that this was Jamies Winston’s team and signed quarterback Ryan Griffin to a two-year deal to be his backup. Thus, it was clear Fitzpatrick was likely going to depart.
There will be more moves yet to come for the Bucs as they try to put a team on the field that can compete in the NFC South in 2019.
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