The Buccaneers had very little roster turnover this year

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers added a few key players this season: DeSean Jackson, O.J. Howard, Chris Baker, J.J. Wilcox, Justin Evans—and that’s about it, really. That’s not that much turnover for a team that keeps showing up as an offseason winner in all of those offseason rankings.

So when Over The Cap ranked the teams with the most roster turnover this year, the Bucs came in just 25th—and that’s probably a little too high.

In reality Tampa should rank even lower than this as their rank is impacted by the APY lost which would indicate impact type players leaving the team, but that number is hyper inflated by the loss of Mike Glennon. This is a team that added a few parts so if you thought their run at the end of the year was for real they should be in good shape.

It’s interesting that the Bucs mostly stood pat this offseason. DeSean Jackson was a key addition, and O.J. Howard was a very good get, but there’s no massive influx of talent despite the fact that the Bucs weren’t exactly dominant last year. Promising, but hardly dominant.

One reason is that they expect several young players to take the next step: Donovan Smith, Ali Marpet, Mike Evans, Jameis Winston, Noah Spence, Vernon Hargreaves, Cameron Brate are all young, progressing key players. Of course, if a few of them take a step back, the Bucs may be in trouble.

Another reason is that they’re getting back a few injured players, most notably J.R. Sweezy and Jacquies Smith, as well as Doug Martin (depending on how we define injury, of course). Hopefully those players will actually turn out to be available and improvements—we’ll see.

One advantage of the lack of turnover is that the Bucs are basically slowly building their roster, year after year. And that’s a lot more sustainable than going through massive changes every offseason.