Mason Foster is not coming back to the Buccaneers

For some reason, the topic of linebacker Mason Foster returning to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers has become a thing the past few days. I say ‘for some reason’, but it was mostly because of tweets like this:

I guess I get why fans may get a little excited about stuff like this. But, ehm, players tweet jokes at each other all the time and it means nothing.

In this case it means extra-duper-special-triple nothing, because Foster is under contract in Washington this year. He’s not a free agent. He’s not available. And the Bucs aren’t going to give up a draft pick for a player they let walk in free agency a couple years ago after a few high-energy but eh seasons of play.

More than that, the Bucs don’t really have a need for Foster. They could use some depth at linebacker, particularly on the strong side with Daryl Smith leaving, but they do have second-year draft pick Devante Bond to groom for that position. And finding competent strongside linebackers isn’t that hard, anyway.

So yeah, no, Foster isn’t coming back to Tampa for anything other than family business, at least not for now. Sorry, not sorry.