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The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have resurrected their season over the last month thanks to a freewheeling offense led by quarterback Baker Mayfield and, most recently, a surprising defensive effort.
Now sitting at 8-6 and in first place in the NFC South, the Buccaneers have won 4 consecutive games headed into a Week 16 road game against the Dallas Cowboys.
One important component the Buccaneers have been missing all season? Any elite edge rushers. Their top three sacks leaders are a pair of interior defensive linemen in Vita Vea and Calijah Kancey (6.0 sacks each) and veteran inside linebacker Lavonte David (5.5 sacks).
Those number are a big reason why Bleacher Report’s Matt Holder thinks the Buccaneers could pursue Washington Commanders edge rusher and former No. 3 overall pick Dante Fowler in free agency in 2025.
“Fowler might not contribute much against the run, but he does have 53.5 career sacks in 138 games with 44 starts,” Holder wrote on December 16. “Comparatively, the 30-year-old who turns 31 in August would lead the Buccaneers with 8.5 sacks this season. Additionally, he’s from St. Petersburg, so this would be a homecoming for him.”
Commanders Built Defense Around Bargain Veterans
The Commanders built their defense in 2024 on head coach Dan Quinn’s expertise as one of the NFL’s best defensive coordinators over the last decade-plus.
After being hired as the Commanders new head coach on February 1, Quinn took that expertise and turned it into borderline genius moves in free agency.
One of the most impactful of those moves was signing edge rusher Dante Fowler to a 1-year, $3.25 million contract and watching Fowler re-establish himself as one of the NFL’s best pass rushers with a team-high 8.5 sacks.
Fowler was one of several veterans the Commanders brought in on bargain deals, including linebacker Bobby Wagner on a 1-year, $6.5 million deal and trading with the New Orleans Saints for Pro Bowl cornerback Marshon Lattimore.
One Thing NFL Teams Always Need: Pass Rushers
The Commanders might already think Fowler is out of their price range, as NFL teams are always in need of pass rushers because of the rotational nature of the position — the more players you can have going in and out of the game at those spots the better off your team will probably be.
Fowler was a 2-time All-SEC pick at Florida before the Jacksonville Jaguars drafted him with the No. 3 overall pick in the 2015 NFL draft but his career got off to a terrible start when he tore his ACL on the first day of minicamp his rookie year. That was followed with a scandal, when he was illegally fined $700,000 by Executive VP and former head coach Tom Coughlin, which led to Coughlin’s firing in December 2019.
The Jaguars traded Fowler to the Los Angeles Rams midway through the 2018 season, where he played his way into a 1-year, $12 million contract in 2019 and a 3-year, $45 million contract with the Atlanta Falcons in 2020.
Fowler played in 2022 and 2023 on 1-year contracts with the Dallas Cowboys — with Quinn as the defensive coordinator — before signing with the Commanders and his 8.5 sacks through the first 14 games are his highest sack total since he racked up 11.5 sacks with the Rams in 2019.
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