Nose Tackle · Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Vita Vea

No. 50 · 9th season

Vita Vea wants to stay — just not on these terms

The request is in. Vita Vea has asked the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to trade him, and the two sides got there the same way these things usually go: they ran out of road trying to find a new deal.

Vea has spent his career in Tampa, becoming one of the more difficult defensive linemen in football to move. Two Pro Bowl selections later, he's entering the last year of his current contract — an $18 million season — and wanted the conversation about what comes next settled before it got to this point. It didn't get settled.

The Buccaneers and Vea couldn't reach a long-term extension. Vea skipped the team's mandatory spring sessions over it. Now there's a formal trade request on the table, and names like the New York Giants and teams in the NFC West are already appearing in the same sentence as his.

For Vea, the math is simple enough: he's earned a long deal, and the clock on his leverage isn't getting any longer. What is harder to know is what Tampa does with a player who has been a cornerstone of their defense while both sides are now, publicly, not on the same page. The last year of a contract tends to answer questions quickly.

Content sourced from publicly available information. Gripd is an independent fan platform not affiliated with the NFL or any team.