Super Bowl champion has right idea about joining Buccaneers

As much fun as it would be for the Buccaneers to add Julian Edelman, the Super Bowl champion wide receiver is right about his prospects.

Could Tom Brady lose Rob Gronkowski as one of his favorite pass-catchers on the Buccaneers and then switch him out for another one of his former teammates?

The Julian Edelman return story already feels far-fetched for a variety of reasons, but a recent interview on the I AM ATHLETE podcast is sure to ignite these rumors again.

Much like former Patriots teammates Brady and Gronk, Edelman chose his words carefully during the interview. If he really didn’t want to play in the NFL any longer he would just say it. Dancing around the question, much like Gronk did with retirement, is how you get people talking.

Is the whole thing a marketing stunt? Is it a joke? Or, could there be some truth to the fact that Edelman might not be done with football?

While Edelman makes it clear that a return is not a guarantee and his first choice would be to return to the Pats, he also showed through his language choice that playing in Tampa with Brady is not a terrible idea.

There’s just one problem.

As Edelman said, there are a lot of hands (mouths) to feed in Tampa. That much is true. There are plenty of wide receivers and tight ends vying for a spot on the roster this year, but Edelman is also partially off in his assessment too.

While there are a lot of mouths to feed in Tampa, how many of those guys are quality and can be trusted?

This is not to say that Edelman at this stage of his career is a guarantee to be better than the young guys currently on the Bucs, but there is still a chance that he can show more than a Jaelon Darden, Breshad Perriman, or Scotty Miller.

Again, the Bucs have a lot of names that the coaching staff seems to like, but none of these names stepped up when the Bucs needed them the most last year.

Does Edelman change that? Probably not. But it is interesting to see him speak about the team in this way after seeing him shut down these rumors for so long prior to this point.

And still, for all the dreamers out there, the Buccaneers do still need to keep an eye on the pass-catcher free agent market. You don’t lose a guy like Gronk and then sit still. If not Edelman, Tampa needs to start looking elsewhere.

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