BY RICK STROUD
Tampa Bay Times
(TNS)<\/p>\n
TAMPA \u2014\u00a0Kyle Trask\u00a0sat behind\u00a0Tom Brady\u00a0for two seasons and\u00a0Baker Mayfield\u00a0for two more. The only thing he will be backing up in\u00a0Tampa Bay\u00a0now is a moving van.<\/p>\n
The Bucs plan to release Trask, the former Florida Gators star, after he lost the No. 2 quarterback spot to veteran\u00a0Teddy Bridgewater.<\/p>\n
Trask will revert to injured reserve with a minor shoulder injury that he sustained in\u00a0Saturday night\u2019s preseason loss to the Bills. After working out an injury settlement, the team plans to part ways with him, the\u00a0Tampa Bay Times\u00a0confirmed.<\/p>\n
Bridgewater appeared in only one preseason game, 12 days after signing with the team, and threw two touchdown passes in a win over the\u00a0Steelers. He was expected to play against the Bills on Saturday night but was sent home before the game with an illness.<\/p>\n
In four seasons, Trask appeared in seven regular-season games for the Bucs with no starts, completing 4 of 11 passes for 28 yards with no touchdowns or interceptions.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, Trask went 13 of 17 for 93 yards and a touchdown to rookie\u00a0Tez Johnson\u00a0against the Bills. After the game, he didn\u2019t appear concerned about his future with the team and said his performance was \u201csolid.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just really fun being out there with everybody in that last preseason game,\u201d Trask said. \u201c\u2026 It\u2019s inevitable cuts are coming up. You don\u2019t know who\u2019s going to be here next week so it\u2019s fun to go out there and give it all with everybody one last time, the last one in preseason.<\/p>\n
\u201cOverall, I thought it was a great overall performance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coach Todd Bowles has said he believes the Bucs can be a Super Bowl contender with Mayfield. If he gets hurt, Bridgewater has experience, starting 65 of the 79 games he has played in.<\/p>\n
When the offseason began, Trask was going to be the Bucs\u2019 No. 2 quarterback. He signed a one-year deal as an unrestricted free agent worth $2.78 million with $1.34 million guaranteed.<\/p>\n
What convinced the Bucs they needed to go another direction? Mayfield missed two practices during training camp after hitting his hand on a defender\u2019s shoulder pad and sustaining a contusion.<\/p>\n
That gave Trask an opportunity to run the starting offense for a couple days in practice and he performed poorly. Then the Bucs signed the 32-year-old Bridgewater.<\/p>\n
The Bucs selected Trask in the second round of the 2021\u00a0NFL\u00a0draft, believing he could develop into the heir apparent to Brady. But Trask never appeared in a game until Week 18 of the 2022 regular season.<\/p>\n
Brady retired and the plan was for Trask to battle\u00a0Blaine Gabbert\u00a0for the starting job. But 40 days later, Brady returned and Trask was back on the bench.<\/p>\n
In 2023, the Bucs signed Mayfield to a one-year, $4 million contract to compete with Trask, and Mayfield won the starting job. He hasn\u2019t missed a game in two seasons and led the Bucs to back-to-back NFC South titles while throwing more touchdowns than any quarterback in the\u00a0NFL\u00a0the past two years.<\/p>\n
The Bucs released undrafted rookie quarterback Connor Bazelak on Monday. But if he clears waivers, they want to sign him to their practice squad.<\/p>\n
Originally Published: August 26, 2025 at 10:28 AM EDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BY RICK STROUDTampa Bay Times(TNS) TAMPA \u2014\u00a0Kyle Trask\u00a0sat behind\u00a0Tom Brady\u00a0for two seasons and\u00a0Baker Mayfield\u00a0for two more. The only…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2077],"tags":[211,339,1301,7,6,9,704,250,2597,2596],"class_list":{"0":"post-335171","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa-bay-buccaneers","8":"tag-buccaneers","9":"tag-college-sports","10":"tag-florida-gators","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-nfl","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-tampa-bay","15":"tag-tampa-bay-buccaneers","16":"tag-tampabay","17":"tag-tampabaybuccaneers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115133692437831194","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}