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Anthony Nelson Has Played 12 of 139 Snaps, and the 1-5 Buccaneers Should Cash Him In
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- Anthony Nelson Has Played 12 of 139 Snaps, and the 1-5 Buccaneers Should Cash Him In
Anthony Nelson has spent all eight of his NFL seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and a front office that rarely makes in-season trades now has a clean reason to move him. His role has shrunk to almost nothing, and a team with a thin edge room needs a body like his.
ESPN's Bill Barnwell proposed a deal that sends Nelson and a 2027 seventh-round pick to the Chicago Bears for a 2027 sixth. The 29-year-old has played 12 of 139 possible defensive snaps over the past two weeks, with four at Dallas and eight against the Steelers .
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David Walker's rise squeezed out Nelson
Oct 8, 2026; Arlington, Texas, USA; Tampa Bay Buccaneers linebacker David Walker (51) rushes the line during the game between the Cowboys and the Buccaneers at AT&T Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-Imagn Images
Second-year pro David Walker is the main reason. He leads the Bucs with four sacks, two of them coming when he doubled his sack total against Pittsburgh. His 82.6 PFF grade ranks seventh among 116 edge defenders, and he has 14 pressures on just 57 pass-rush snaps.
Todd Bowles said Walker's workload keeps growing. "Yeah, game plan-wise, we ramp it up every week – he's been playing that well. We give him the plays we can give him, but it's been ramped up every week," Bowles said Monday, per the team's quote sheet .
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First-round pick Rueben Bain Jr. has played 141 snaps and has five pressures on 76 pass-rush snaps, and his 51.6 PFF grade has him near the bottom among edges . Al-Quadin Muhammad, who signed a one-year deal worth up to $6 million after an 11-sack season in Detroit, carries a 77.6 PFF grade . Nelson sits at 58.0 with three pressures on 46 pass-rush snaps.
Nelson is in the final year of a two-year, $10 million contract with a $4 million base salary, and Barnwell estimates he is owed about $2.7 million the rest of the way. He becomes a free agent in March, so Tampa Bay would swap a few months of a rotational rusher for a pick upgrade.
Chicago's need is real. Montez Sweat is serving a two-game PED suspension , and Dayo Odeyingbo went on injured reserve Oct. 17 with a quad injury. Barnwell noted the Bears have a 9.8% sack rate when rushing four or fewer, so a veteran four-man rusher has value there.
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For a 1-5 team sitting last in the NFC South, the math is simple. ESPN's Dan Graziano already floated Vita Vea as a sleeper trade candidate, and Nelson is a far easier deal to make. Fans at Raymond James Stadium have seen Nelson give years of steady work, but every snap he takes now is one Walker or Bain could use. The Bucs have bigger problems to fix on the offensive line anyway.
Cashing him in for a sixth-round pick would not move the needle much in Tampa Bay this season. It would hand his remaining snaps to the two young rushers the Bucs are building the 2027 defense around.
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This story was originally published by Athlon on Oct 22, 2026, where it first appeared in the NFL section. Add Athlon as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
