The Buccaneers probably shouldn’t trade for Torrey Smith

Wide receiver Torrey Smith is on the trade block, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter. “Multiple teams” have shown interest, though it’s not clear how concrete that interest is, nor how much the 49ers would want for Smith.

The trade deadline is exactly one week away, so any team that wants Smith would have to move reasonably fast. Could the Tampa Bay Buccaneers be in the running? They did lose Vincent Jackson to an ACL injury, but Smith is likely not on the radar.

Torrey Smith may have deep speed, he’s three years removed from his last and only 1,000+-yard season. Despite playing in every game the past two season, he couldn’t top 800 yards in either of them. This season, he has just 199 receiving yards in seven games. That’s not all because of him — he hasn’t been blessed with great quarterback play — but clearly we’re not talking about a game-breaking talent, here.

Smith comes with a reasonably expensive contract, featuring $9.6 million cap hits in each of the next three seasons. That’s almost as much as Vincent Jackson is making now, though the Bucs do have the room to absorb a contract like that. Whether they actually want to do that is another question entirely, though.

In addition to that, the Bucs are likely to get Louis Murphy back within a couple of weeks, and Russell Shepard looked pretty good as the starter last week. Smith would perhaps add a quality impulse, but there’s little evidence to suggest that that improvement would be substantial, and we haven’t even talked about the likely adjustment period yet.

And then there’s the fact that the Bucs would have to give up something for Smith, probably a draft pick, all for a short-term gain and a significant cap hit they could spend on a much better player in free agency.