{"id":43683,"date":"2025-05-12T08:02:14","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T08:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/43683\/"},"modified":"2025-05-12T08:02:14","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T08:02:14","slug":"iowa-football-lb-signs-nfl-free-agency-deal-with-tampa-bay-buccaneers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/43683\/","title":{"rendered":"Iowa football LB signs NFL free agency deal with Tampa Bay Buccaneers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">First news of a tryout signing from Bucs rookie minicamp &#8212; Tampa Bay is signing Iowa linebacker Nick Jackson as an undrafted rookie free agent. Played at Virginia before Iowa &#8212; 555 career tackles in 73 college games, both huge numbers, now will compete for a spot on the 53.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Greg Auman (@gregauman) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/gregauman\/status\/1921619665962356797?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">May 11, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Former <a href=\"https:\/\/hawkeyeswire.usatoday.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Iowa<\/a> linebacker Nick Jackson is signing with the <a href=\"https:\/\/bucswire.usatoday.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Tampa Bay Buccaneers<\/a> as an undrafted free agent. Fox Sports&#8217; Greg Auman broke the news of the signing.<\/p>\n<p>Jackson spent two seasons in <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/football\/ncaaf\/teams\/iowa-hawkeyes\/3434\/\" data-autotag=\"6610c59f-1f25-4371-9123-fabf609c6911\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Iowa<\/a> City, tallying 201 tackles, 13 tackles for loss, 11 pass breakups, 6.5 sacks, two forced fumbles and one interception. The 6-foot, 237-pound linebacker registered 555 career tackles, which ranked as the second-most in FBS history.<\/p>\n<p>Jackson&#8217;s 73 collegiate games are the most in NCAA history.<\/p>\n<p>A highly-productive player at both Virginia and Iowa, Jackson notched four different seasons of 100-plus tackles. Jackson was a second-team All-Big Ten choice by Phil Steele in 2023 and was an honorable mention All-Big Ten honoree by the coaches and media in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>The Atlanta, Georgia, native started 27 games for the Hawkeyes across the 2023 and 2024 seasons.<\/p>\n<p>Jackson had previously <a href=\"https:\/\/hawkeyeswire.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/college\/hawkeyes\/football\/2025\/04\/28\/iowa-football-lb-nick-jackson-invited-giants-rookie-minicamp\/83321514007\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">accepted a rookie minicamp invite with the New York Giants<\/a> before impressing at the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/football\/nfl\/teams\/tampa-bay-buccaneers\/362\" data-autotag=\"0975654b-7314-4c6a-8b1d-0052f65c0335\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Bucs<\/a>&#8216; rookie minicamp and earning the UDFA deal.<\/p>\n<p>Contact\/Follow us\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/HawkeyesWire\" rel=\"nofollow\">@HawkeyesWire<\/a>\u00a0on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/@HawkeyesWire\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a>\u00a0to follow ongoing coverage of Iowa news, notes and opinions.\u00a0Follow Josh on X:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/JoshOnREF\" rel=\"nofollow\">@JoshOnREF<\/a><\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"First news of a tryout signing from Bucs rookie minicamp &#8212; Tampa Bay is signing Iowa linebacker Nick&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2077],"tags":[2686,247,265,210,322,211,318,339,324,7,863,875,2420,519,4523,521,4525,248,267,49,1225,206,56,88,6,4539,245,537,530,2984,9,266,209,704,250,2597,2596,1223,811,225],"class_list":{"0":"post-43683","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa-bay-buccaneers","8":"tag-agency","9":"tag-american","10":"tag-american-football","11":"tag-bay","12":"tag-big","13":"tag-buccaneers","14":"tag-college","15":"tag-college-sports","16":"tag-conference","17":"tag-football","18":"tag-fox","19":"tag-fox-sports","20":"tag-free","21":"tag-giants","22":"tag-hawkeyes","23":"tag-iowa","24":"tag-iowa-hawkeyes-football","25":"tag-national","26":"tag-national-sports","27":"tag-ncaa","28":"tag-ncaa-big-ten-conference","29":"tag-new","30":"tag-new-york-giants","31":"tag-news","32":"tag-nfl","33":"tag-nfl-free-agency-signing","34":"tag-overall","35":"tag-overall-positive","36":"tag-positive","37":"tag-signing","38":"tag-sports","39":"tag-sports-news","40":"tag-tampa","41":"tag-tampa-bay","42":"tag-tampa-bay-buccaneers","43":"tag-tampabay","44":"tag-tampabaybuccaneers","45":"tag-ten","46":"tag-twitter","47":"tag-york"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43683","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=43683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}