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For the third straight year, he Tampa Bay Buccaneers have resurrected a season that was on life support and turned things around in the second half of the year — this time that meant rallying from a 4-6 record to win four consecutive games to improve to 8-6 and vaulting into first place in the NFC South Division with 3 games remaining.
While the Buccaneers are playing as good as almost anyone in the NFL right now, if just one player went down the season would essentially be over — quarterback Baker Mayfield is playing the best football of his career and seems destined for a second consecutive Pro Bowl nod. Without him? Super dicey.
That’s why the Buccaneers should take a tiny step toward making sure there’s a contingency plan in place were Mayfield to get hurt that goes beyond fourth-year backup quarterback Kyle Trask and sign veteran free agent quarterback Teddy Bridgewater.
Bridgewater, who made his lone Pro Bowl with the Minnesota Vikings in 2015, has expressed his desire to return to the NFL after spending 2024 as the head coach at his alma mater, Miami Northwestern High School, where he won the Class 3A state championship with a 41-0 win over Raines High on December 14.
“We wanted to win a state championship, and then Coach goes back to the league, see what happens, and then come back in February and continue coaching high school football,” Bridgewater told NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport on December 17.
Bridgewater Came Back From Devastating Injury
Bridgewater was a first round pick (No. 32 overall) out of Louisville in the 2014 NFL draft after leading the Cardinals to a Sugar Bowl win in 2013. He was one of the NFL’s elite young quarterbacks through his first 2 seasons, making the PFWAA All-Rookie Team in 2014 and becoming a Pro Bowler in 2015 after leading the Vikings to an 11-5 record.
Bridgewater suffered a devastating knee injury just 1 week before the Vikings’ 2016 season opener — a dislocated knee that resulted in a torn ACL and other structural damage — and missed all of the 2016 season and all but 1 game of the 2017 season.
The Vikings released Bridgewater following the 2017 and he spent 1 seasons as a backup with the New York Jets and 1 season as a backup with the New Orleans Saints in 2019, where he went 5-0 filling in for injured starter Drew Brees.
That season propelled Bridgewater to the biggest payday of his career — a 3-year, $63 million free agent contract with the Carolina Panthers in March 2020.
Bridgewater lasted 1 season as the starter for the Panthers before they traded him to the Denver Broncos, where he went 7-7 as the starter in 2021 before spending 1 season each as a backup for the Miami Dolphins and Lions before announcing his retirement in February 2024.
Trask Named One of NFL’s Worst Backup QBs
Bridgewater, even at 32 years old, would almost certainly be an upgrade over Trask, who Bleacher Report’s Maurice Moton ranked 30th out of 32 NFL backup quarterbacks headed into the season.
Trask was a second round pick (No. 64 overall) out of Florida in the 2021 NFL draft.
“Most of the quarterbacks in the lowest tier have had rough career starts with poor performances,” Moton wrote on August 29, pointing out that Trask has “minimal regular season experience.”
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