The Tampa Bay Buccaneers lost a true legend this week when Ronde Barber announced he was retiring from football after 16 long seasons with the Bucs. But the future Hall of Famer shed some light on just why he retired, and his answers are in no way surprising. When asked by USA Today why he finally hung up the cleats, Barber said that the rebuilding that Tampa was going through just didn’t suit what he wanted to do in his career.
However, he did note that had the Buccaneers asked him to come back and gave him a detailed plan of how he’d be used, he would have been very open to that idea.
“Now don’t get me wrong, if (GM) Mark (Dominik) and (coach) Greg (Schiano) would’ve said, ‘Hey, we absolutely need you to play, you played great last year, here’s X amount of dollars, come play, we need you…’ That wasn’t necessarily the case,” Barber told USA TODAY Sports. “They’re reshaping that football team. You’re spending a quarter of a billion in free agents in two years, they’re definitely going in a new direction.”
Barber noted that the Buccaneers have spent half a billion dollars in recent seasons on free agents, and while that number is a tad bit exaggerated, he’s not wrong in the notion that Tampa is moving in a new direction. The team added Eric Wright and Mark Barron to the defense last year and loaded up their secondary with safety Dashon Goldson and cornerback Darrelle Revis.
That figure that Barber gave may have been off, but roughly $140 million could potentially end up in the pockets of Goldson and Revis combined.
But Barber ultimately decided that the role the Buccaneers had for him wasn’t one he was willing to put his life on hold for. He did say that had the Bucs asked him to be a starter, he likely would have returned. But a backup role isn’t what he was looking for and the two side amicably parted ways.
“Possibly. That would’ve made it a little bit harder of a decision, obviously,” Barber said. “But that wasn’t the case. They wanted me to play, I don’t doubt that at all. I had open lines of communication with Mark the past couple of years about continuing to play. At the end, it was me deciding I didn’t need football as much as I once did and it was time to venture into a new thing.”