Bucs Decline Joe Tryon-Shoyinka’s 5th-Year Option

On January 25 Pewter Report reported that the Bucs would not likely pick up outside linebacker Joe Tryon-Shoyinka’s fifth-year option and nothing has changed since our initial reporting. May 2 is the deadline for NFL teams to either pick up or decline fifth-year options for first-round picks in the 2021 draft class, and as expected, the Bucs will decline to pick up the former Washington Huskies pass rusher’s option year.

The Bucs had high hopes for Tryon-Shoyinka when they drafted him 32nd overall in 2021. Coming off of a Super Bowl victory in which their veteran outside linebackers Shaq Barrett and Jason Pierre-Paul shined, the team was hoping to bolster that room with a young athletic ball of clay that could eventually step in for Pierre-Paul.

At 6-foot-5 and 259 pounds with 34-inch arms, he had enviable size and length. He built on that hope with a good preseason in his rookie campaign, racking up six pressures and two sacks in just 38 pass rush snaps.

But since that promising beginning, Tryon-Shoyinka has been disappointing when measured against his first-round draft pick status. Over three seasons he has logged just 13 sacks to go with 114 tackles, 18 tackles for loss, six passes defensed, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery. But is perhaps more well known for the volume of sacks he failed to finish than he is for the ones he has created.

In 2021 and 2022, Tryon-Shoyinka lost out on multiple quarterback takedowns for a simple and maddening reason: he missed the tackles. Pro Football Focus has him with a missed tackle rate of over 20% in both the 2021 and 2022 seasons. He since improved upon that mark this year, reducing that rate to 14.9%. But despite the improvement in finishing tackles, he was only able to improve his sack count from only four in each of his first two seasons to five in 2023.

JTS’ fifth sack of the season didn’t come until Week 18 last year. But it was a doozy, as it came in the fourth quarter by way of a strip-sack that sealed Tampa Bay’s win at Carolina and made the Bucs NFC South champions for a third season in a row.

Tryon-Shoyinka was also demoted to rotational backup midway through the season as rookie Yaya Diaby supplanted him as the starter opposite veteran Shaq Barrett. This all points to the Bucs not picking up his fifth-year option and risking a fully guaranteed $13.251 million salary in 2025 on him.

Joe Tryon-Shoyinka Has One Last Chance To Make A Good Impression With Bucs

Bucs OLB Joe Tryon-Shoyinka – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

Despite the Bucs electing not to give Joe Tryon-Shoyinka the one-year extension, he will still more than likely be on Tampa Bay’s roster in 2024. Just because he hasn’t quite played up to the option does not mean he isn’t solid part of an edge rotation.

Bucs head coach Todd Bowles said this offseason that he has a better idea of how to use Tryon-Shoyinka’s skillset after three years. There is a good chance he could be used in a variety of roles in the upcoming 2024 season.

“Joe is a very unique player,” Bowles said at the NFL Annual Meeting in March. “He’s not going to be a go-around-the-corner, Shaq-type guy. Joe can move all across the line of scrimmage and help us in a lot of things. He’s our linebacker, he’s our defensive end, he’s our three-tech, he’s our part-time nickel, he’s our part-time inside ‘backer. He can come from a lot of areas, so he has a lot of jobs. He’s one of those chess pieces that I talk about.”

With his 2024 salary cap hit of $3,554,487 being both extremely reasonable and almost completely guaranteed, Tryon-Shoyinka still presents value to the club. With Tampa Bay releasing 31-year old Shaq Barrett this season and replacing him with veteran Randy Gregory and then selecting Alabama outside linebacker Chris Braswell in the second round in the 2024 NFL Draft, Tryon-Shoyinka will have to fight to regain a top spot on the Bucs depth chart opposite YaYa Diaby for the upcoming 2024 season.

This will give Tryon-Shoyinka one last opportunity to build value before entering free agency in 2025. Chase Young was able to do so this past year in both Washington and San Francisco and will be making $13 million in 2024 in New Orleans with the Saints, far eclipsing the fifth-year option he would have played on in 2024.

JTS will be hoping to do the same.