If Buccaneers quarterback Josh Freeman had any remaining allies in the Tampa media, they’ve likely jumped off the bandwagon after Freeman refused to talk to reporters on Thursday -- but then sat down for an exclusive interview with Josina Anderson of ESPN.
A portion of the session was played not long ago on SportsCenter. It doesn’t shed much light or break much new ground.
“The situation is pretty standard,” Freeman says. “They can make a change at quarterback. They can make a change at any position.”
He also states matter-of-factly that his “new role is to be second-string quarterback.”
Anderson later asks Freeman whether he’s going to seek a trade.
“There’s been a lot of talk of this,” Freeman says. “There was talk of this before there was talk of this, if that makes sense.”
It makes sense, in light of our report that the Buccaneers could have traded Freeman in the offseason, but wanted too much. Cardinals quarterback Carson Palmer has acknowledged that the Buccaneers were calling his agent before Palmer was traded from Oakland to Arizona.
“I don’t know how this thing’s gonna end up,” Freeman says. “What a lot of people don’t understand is that, as a player, you don’t have much say in trades.”
In this case, Freeman could block a trade by refusing to extend or otherwise renegotiate a contract that pays him $6.44 million beyond Week Four.
Freeman surely would prefer to be cut. That way, he could collect the balance of his base salary from the Bucs as termination pay, and then he could pick his next team for the balance of 2013 -- and hit the open market for 2014.