Tampa Bay Buccaneers players will be headed back to work on April 21, just a few days before the NFL's 2025 draft. That's the opening date for the team's offseason workout program, which will end with a mandatory minicamp from June 10-12. The rest of the program, as always, is voluntary, though the Buccaneers generally enjoy a very high attendance rate.
The Buccaneers will begin their 2024 offseason workout program on the third Monday of April, making them one of 25 clubs with a start date of April 21 or 22. Teams with a new head coach in 2025 are permitted to start up to two weeks earlier than that date. As such, offseason programs will begin on April 7 or 8 for the Chicago Bears, Jacksonville Jaguars, Las Vegas Raiders, New England Patriots and New York Jets, while the Dallas Cowboys and New Orleans Saints, will kick things off on April 14.
Each team's voluntary offseason program can last a maximum of nine weeks and is broken up into three phases, with the amount and variety of work allowed and the involvement of coaches ramping up from one phase to the next. The first two weeks of the program are known as Phase One, in which activities are limited to meetings, strength and conditioning and rehab work only. Phase Two is three weeks long and includes more on-field work and instruction but no drills with live contact or offensive and defensive units going against each other.
Phase Three is the part of the program that most resembles in-season workouts, with teams permitted to hold up to 10 "organized team activity days," or OTAs. While there is still no live contact allowed during OTAs, teams can conduct such offense-vs.-defense drills as 11-on-11, 9-on-7 and 7-on-7. This phase also concludes with a three-day minicamp, which is the only part of the program that is mandatory for veteran players.
Because the third Monday of April this year is as late as it can possibly be, on the 21st, the allotted time for the three phases of work is a little more condensed if teams don't want to extend their mandatory minicamp into late June. As such, while the Buccaneers have typically split their allotted 10 OTA practices across three weeks, this year they will conduct eight such workouts over two weeks. The first set runs from Tuesday-Friday, May 27-30, and the second set runs from Monday-Thursday, June 2-5. As usual, the final minicamp will cover the middle of the second week of June.
Teams are also allowed to conduct a rookie football development program that lasts up to seven weeks and in 2025 may begin on May 12. That includes a post-draft rookie minicamp that can be held on either the first or second weekend after the draft, which for the Buccaneers this year will be conducted on May 9 and 10.
