— In the moments after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers made Jameis Winston the first pick in the draft Thursday night, the team agreed to terms on a contract with the quarterback.<\/p>\n
Then, on Friday, the team officially signed Winston. The four-year deal is worth $25.35 million, which includes a $16.69 million signing bonus, a source told ESPN’s Adam Schefter.<\/p>\n
The entire deal is guaranteed under the league’s collective-bargaining agreement. The contract also contains a fifth-year option that is standard in rookie contract for first-round picks.<\/p>\n
“It shows us that he wants us as much as we wanted him,” general manager Jason Licht said.<\/p>\n
Licht said the team wanted to get the contract out of the way as soon as possible.<\/p>\n
“It’s something we wanted to do,” Licht said. “And it was something where they had no reluctancy either. It was fairly smooth. We wanted Jameis to start off on the right foot. There’s no reason to punish Jameis. He’s going to be treated contractually in terms of money just like any other first overall pick.”<\/p>\n
Winston is the second quarterback the Bucs have taken with the No. 1 overall pick. Vinny Testaverde was the other in 1987.<\/p>\n
“I’m glad we got the contract stuff out of the way,” Winston said. “I’m just looking forward to getting with the team. We’ve got some great teammates and I’m looking forward to working with the coaching staff. Just playing some football. This whole thing has been long for me. But football is what I’m here for and I can’t wait.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
— In the moments after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers made Jameis Winston the first pick in the draft Thursday night, the team agreed to terms on a contract with the quarterback. Then, on Friday, the team officially signed Winston. The four-year deal is worth $25.35 million, which includes a $16.69 million signing bonus, a source […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88910,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/88910"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38762\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}