Cliff Welch/Icon Sportswire through Getty Pictures
Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady won’t play within the crew’s preseason opener in opposition to the Miami Dolphins, head coach Todd Bowles announced Wednesday.
Brady, who turned 45 on Wednesday, has been given extraordinarily restricted motion throughout latest preseasons. He tried simply 16 passes in two preseason video games a 12 months in the past and can probably be on a equally quick schedule this 12 months.
Blaine Gabbert will probably open the Bucs’ preseason opener beneath middle, with second-year quarterback Kyle Trask getting a big quantity of labor as effectively. Trask was a 2021 second-round choose and has already gotten more extensive looks in camp than a 12 months in the past.
There’s a sure stage of irony in Brady sitting out in opposition to the Dolphins, given the franchise clearly needs he was their beginning quarterback. The NFL stripped Miami of its 2023 first-round choose and 2024 third-round choose for tampering violations associated to impermissible contact with Brady and former New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton.
A league investigation discovered the Dolphins contacted Brady twice whereas he was beneath contract with different groups, in 2019 with the New England Patriots and final 12 months whereas he was with the Bucs. The Dolphins additionally tried to usher in Payton regardless of the Tremendous Bowl-winning coach not but asserting his retirement.
In different phrases: Dolphins followers won’t even get to look at the person who value them their 2023 first-round choose in motion within the preseason.
