Gilroy native signs with Tampa Bay and will compete for starting
quarterback job
Gilroy – The financial terms were right. The situation was desirable. And it got Jeff Garcia and Jon Gruden together.
Tampa Bay was always at the top of Garcia’s list of teams he wanted to sign with, especially after the Philadelphia Eagles made clear their direction when they signed A.J. Feeley to a three-year deal.
“I appreciate the way he approaches the game,” Garcia, 37, was quoted as saying about Gruden on the Buccaneers’ Web site. “I appreciate the way he coaches. I love his fire, his enthusiasm; those are things that excite me.” Interestingly, Garcia remembers Gruden as the first coach he worked out for coming out of the Canadian Football League in 1999. At the time, Gruden was with the Raiders.
Gruden tried to land Garcia three years ago. A deal would have been struck at that time, but Garcia would have had to leave $4.5 million on the table at the time – the Cleveland Browns offered substantially more money when the San Francisco 49ers let Garcia leave as a free agent, said Steve Baker, Garcia’s agent. This time, the dollars made sense, although Baker insists money wasn’t the only consideration.
Garcia’s deal with his fifth NFL team in five years is for two years. He will be paid $5 million in the first year. The deal could be worth $14.5 million if Garcia starts during the duration of the deal.
“Jeff will be paid like a starter,” Baker confirmed. “Certainly, that was what we hoped would happen. Tampa is arguably a quarterback away (from competing for a playoff berth). It was well documented how much Jeff and Jon Gruden wanted to work with each other.”
Don’t be fooled by the Bucs trading for Jake Plummer on the same day as they signed Garcia. Plummer has said he won’t play for Tampa Bay, and will retire first. The Bucs only gave up a conditional fourth-round draft choice, so in a sense they were doing Plummer a favor.
Plummer thought all along that he would be traded to Houston, but the Texans were unwilling to part with a fourth-round draft choice. So it made sense for the Broncos to deal with Tampa Bay, since neither team has anything to lose and Denver wasn’t going to bring Plummer back anyway.
As for Garcia’s choice, it came down to the three criteria that Baker told the Free Lance last week – quality of playing experience (the Bucs run a variation of the West Coast offense and Chris Simms is still a question mark because of his health), quality of environment (the Bucs are certainly closer to being a playoff team than Oakland, who publicly expressed interest Friday) and compensation (starter’s money is better than the backup money that the Eagles never offered).
“The reality is that Oakland picks in the first spot and that a quarterback is going to be chosen No. 1,” Baker said. “That dynamic certainly entered into Jeff’s decision-making process. But it’s not true (as rumored) that Jeff told the Raiders that he wouldn’t sign there if they drafted a quarterback.”
In fact, the Oakland situation was attractive to Garcia because he could have played in his home state, about an hour from where he grew up and excelled as a schoolboy and collegiate athlete. As Baker pointed out, the Raiders have a top-level defense and a new energy with new coaches from head man Lane Kiffin to most assistants.
However, the reality is that Tampa Bay is closer to being a winning team than Oakland and the Bucs compete in the NFC, which has recently not been as strong as the AFC. Therefore, playoff spots are more easily secured.
In the end, Garcia was well compensated for the job he did, helping to lift the Eagles from a 5-6 team to a playoff team that won its first-round game.
Garcia completed 61.7 percent of his passes with 10 touchdowns and two interceptions in his eighth NFL season.
He thought all along that he was still able to be an NFL starter. The Bucs agreed.
