Todd Bowles dishes out on Buccaneers' decision to cut Tyler Johnson

The move was somewhat unexpected.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers had some tough decisions to make when cutting their roster down to 53 men on Tuesday and perhaps the toughest, most surprising cut was that of wide receiver Tyler Johnson, who the team drafted in the fifth round of the 2020 NFL draft out of Minnesota.

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The Bucs had, and still have, a deep receiver core, but many thought Johnson would be the one to survive the cut. With Johnson now gone, Buccaneers' head coach Todd Bowles explained why the team decided to move on.

“That was tough,” Bowles said. “Again, we have a lot of receivers and when you get down to a fifth and sixth receiver – Jaelon [Darden] returns punts and kicks, [and] Tyler [Johnson] was the sixth receiver to dress on Sundays. You’ve got to be able to play special teams and contribute. [He is] a great pass receiver, very good catcher – he can catch the ball – [he’s] a very good player, but no special teams value.”

“Once you get down past the top four and five, you’ve got to have more value then just catching the football because you won’t dress on Sundays,” Bowles continued. “You know, that was a big reason behind it. We felt ‘BP’ (Breshad Perriman) can do a lot of things on special teams, we feel Scotty [Miller] can do some things as well. So that’s what it came down to.”

Johnson has had his promising moments the past two years but struggled with consistency, especially when it came to separating from his defender and dropping passes. Also, to Bowles' point, he didn't really provide much in the special team's department as other receivers deeper down depth charts typically do.

The Minnesota native has a chance to rectify an iffy start to his career after being claimed on waivers by the Houston Texans.

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