Bruce Allen Players Quotations

He wanted to be a Buccaneer, and we want him to be a Buccaneer. In just a few days of conversations, we were able to reach an agreement with him, and it cleared up room so that we can sign some of our own players back and go out into free agency.

Our goal has been to make sure we could have a team we could build around, to be around these coaches and learn Day 1 from them. That's been the objective. And I think we have the same amount of second-year players on this team as we do first-year players. The process will continue and the nice part of it is there's still the core of those champions here that these young guys can play with.

It cleared up room so that we can sign of our own players back and go out into free agency. Because Derrick is interested in getting another ring.

We do need some new players on this team. We're getting to the situation where if we can have two more good drafts as good as the last two, we'll be OK.

We have a similar challenge to about a dozen teams, because the Buccaneers over the last six seasons have paid their players extremely well. That's why we have these cap issues.

We're happy; I think it's a credit to those players who worked so hard, ... I discussed it before. They stayed here during the off-season when people were gone trying to improve themselves and in different ways, each of them showed up whether it was in training camp or the preseason games. And they've earned their right to be here right now.

Not because of who you asked about, I think it's unfair to talk about specific players at this time. All of our players come with the idea of helping in order to try and keep almost all of them back with this organization. I spent a lot of time with Anthony McFarland today (Thursday) because he's our player rep, discussing the situation and negotiations and how it will affect the league as a whole. I'm pretty optimistic about the attitude of the Buccaneer players.

Derrick's interested in getting another (Super Bowl) ring, so he allowed us to clear up room so that we can sign some of our own players back.

The league moved the deadline back 72 hours so it allows teams and players more time to work with the last capped year calculations and that is what we have been doing (Thursday) and will continue to do this weekend.