Buccaneers Assistant GM Explains NFL Practice Penalty
June 18th, 2026
So the Bucs lost a spring practice because of too much contact in a spring practice, where contact is against NFL rules.
Tampa Bay assistant general manager Mike Greenberg dove into how it happened.
Greenberg joined The Rondé Barber Show, a WFLA-TV streaming property, and explained the process of how the Bucs got caught last month — and he agreed with the penalty. Head coach Todd Bowles is constantly monitoring practice for contact, per Greenberg.
“We’ve had a great offseason, a lot of energy, a lot of good stuff between the offense and defensive line,” he said. “It’s been fun being out there, but with that comes sometimes a little bit too much contact. And Todd’s got to regulate it a lot after each play, which he does a great job of.
“The league, really, they’ll just ask for [practice] tape randomly from teams from time to time. They’ll get through everyone; sometimes they’ll go through teams twice. And they picked a day, if we’re being honest, we did have contact and we did deserve to lose an OTA day. But with that, you know, we did get in a lot of good work, as well. … It’s more of just the guys were excited to be out there and working.”
Interesting to hear Greenberg says the NFL randomly picks a practice or two to review. Most teams have nine spring OTA days. So that’s strong odds that a team will get away with forbidden activities at a shorts, t-shirts and helmets practice.
As Greenberg said, “we did get in a lot of good work.”
June 18th, 2026 at 6:19 am
Well there’s that.
June 18th, 2026 at 6:46 am
Less than half the NFL teams use all 9 of the allotted OTA days.
12 teams use 7-8 of the allotted 9.
And 7 teams use fewer than seven.
There is no win-loss correlation to who uses the most or least.
Since the Bucs are a team who schedules all 9 and dropped it to 8, the loss of this SINGLE practice day means absolutely nothing.
Nada.
Zilch.
The big goose egg!
June 18th, 2026 at 7:10 am
JA said it well. Flag football, I’m not getting excited about missing a practice.
June 18th, 2026 at 7:34 am
“Random”
June 18th, 2026 at 8:03 am
No contact in a contact sport, go figure
June 18th, 2026 at 8:19 am
Further proof that the people complaining about losing a day of spring underwear football practice were being ridiculous. You can barely do anything in these practices. The NFL monitoring spring practices is news to me. I had no idea.
June 18th, 2026 at 8:41 am
Thanks for explaining nothing, showing nothing, on a nothing article.
June 18th, 2026 at 10:29 am
Joe, I seem to recall you writing about a specific instance of contact in one of your practice notes.
I’m too lazy to go back and search it out, lol. But, I’m wondering if that might be the tape the NFL reviewed?
June 18th, 2026 at 10:39 am
The best move was to cancel the last practice after losing another one. Fewer chances to confuse and befuddle the players
June 18th, 2026 at 11:21 am
“You can barely do anything in these practices. The NFL monitoring spring practices is news to me. I had no idea.“
Not active monitoring, but they can randomly request practice tape in the off-season. It’s the NFL competition committee, NFLPA and iirc the Referee Association(inside men) who act as 3rd party agents and have the freedom to report excessive physicality in these offseason practice period where contact is prohibited.
Sports Politricks, but it’s not just the league, players vote on this type of stuff
June 18th, 2026 at 12:16 pm
So, camp cup cake is too rough? Where are all the “Bowles is too soft”, yada, yada, yada boys?
June 18th, 2026 at 3:20 pm
Smart. Take the penalty. Better to have one good hard practice than 2 soft ones. Our headcoach is smart. Go Bucs