Bucs kicker Matt Bryant, who has held the job since 2005, might not be holding onto it much longer.
Bryant didn’t play on Friday night against the Texans, which means that Bryant didn’t play at all in four preseason games.
Bryant likely didn’t help his cause via recent comments suggesting that his chief competition, Mike Nugent, possibly opted to sign with the team in the offseason based on something that coach Raheem Morris and/or G.M. Mark Dominik might have said about Nugent’s chances to wrest the job from Bryant.
“Did [Morris and Dominik] tell him something to make him think this was the best opportunity?” Bryant recently said on a Tampa radio station. “Or did he look at a number of teams and single me out? If he singled me out, then he’s out of his damn mind. If I would have been 100 percent healthy, like we do back home, you take somebody out behind the woodshed and kick their butt.”
Bryant hasn’t played in the preseason due to a hamstring injury. Recently, Morris reportedly told Bryant that failing to play in the final preseason game could hurt his chances of making the team.
“There’s different things that could happen,” Bryant said of his chances of sticking around. “They could very well go with him, or they could give me a little more time to get a little stronger. They could go with somebody from another team.”
It’s looking like the least likely outcome of those three possibilities will be the ongoing presence on the roster of a player named Bryant, whose first name isn’t Antonio.