If the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are truly lacking at any position on defense, it’s at cornerback, where they seem to have made all the wrong moves at arguably the most important position on that side of the ball.
ESPN’s Seth Walder called out the Buccaneers for as much on Tuesday as he handed out offseason grades for all 32 NFL teams, citing the loss of starting cornerback Jamel Dean to the Pittsburgh Steelers on a 3-year, $36.75 million contract as Tampa Bay’s move he disliked the most this offseason.
“The Buccaneers also lost Dean in free agency. Given the contract he signed — $12.25 million per year from the Steelers — I would have tried to keep him,” Walder wrote.
The Buccaneers, in fact, did the opposite, opening the door for Dean to get out of a previously signed contract early.
Bucs Wanted Out of Jamel Dean’s $52M Contract
Just 1 year ago, the Buccaneers were so eager to get out of business with Dean they decided to let the veteran cornerback out of his 4-year, $52 million contract 1 year early.
That meant, for all intents and purposes, they had Dean in a lame-duck year in 2025, which could have been a disaster. From Tampa Bay’s perspective, that only meant it would have been no different from the 2 seasons after they’d given Dean a career payday before the 2023 season.
Dean, somehow, flipped the script and looked like an elite cornerback once again in 2025, turning that into another massive payday with the Steelers.
ESPN’s Bill Barnwell singled out Dean’s deal with the Steelers as 1 of the NFL’s best free-agent signings in the 2026 cycle.
“Lining up in a blitz-heavy scheme under coach Todd Bowles in Tampa Bay, Dean gave up a 63.1 passer rating in coverage last season, one of the best marks in the league,” Barnwell wrote. “His 2.1% missed tackle rate also ranked among the league leaders, and Dean has consistently been a very good tackler in his seven-year career. The Steelers are only really on the hook for one year and $13.5 million, leaving them with plenty of flexibility if Dean does take a step back in his age-30 season.”
Teams Warned Against Signing Jamel Dean
As Dean was poised to cash in with another big free agent contract after putting up decent numbers in 2025, Bleacher Report’s Gary Davenport warned teams against paying up, calling Dean the NFL’s biggest “free agent bust waiting to happen.”
“It’s not a great year to be an NFL team in need of help at the cornerback position,” Davenport wrote. “This year’s draft class isn’t especially imposing, and neither is the group of available free agents. But cornerback is a premium position, and the number of teams annually looking to upgrade in the secondary usually numbers about 32. That could lead to another common mistake made by NFL general managers in free agency—overpaying the ‘top’ player available at the position … however, there’s an old saying that the best ability is availability, and that has been a career-long issue for the 29-year-old, who has missed multiple games every year he has been in the NFL.”
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