NFL free agency will get underway in mid-March. However, for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, an important date is approaching that will affect the team’s outlook on multiple levels.

The contracts of Mike Evans, Baker Mayfield, and Antoine Winfield, Jr. are set to expire on Monday February 19. The effect of their expiration – in shortened terms – means that, absent an extension before Monday, the Buccaneers reportedly will take on a $11 million figure for the 2024 salary cap, according to CBS Sports’ Jonathan Jones. Their contracts had void years involved to space out the cap hit and the expiration of the contracts will bring that money due against the 2024 cap. Evans’ is the big one at around $7.387 million in money during those void years.

In the event the Buccaneers were to reach a deal before then with any of those players, then their cap hit(s) would be spaced out to future years again. So there would be no true savings as far as just being able to avoid the hit; it’s just a matter of when they take it on.

However, with Evans, Mayfield, Winfield, Jr., and Lavonte David all unsigned, having that additional cap flexibility in 2024 would go a long way to bringing the quartet back intact without having to go through the cap gymnastics that Licht and his staff had to go through to navigate a massive cap deficit of $81.5 million over the cap.

That being said, Evans has made it clear that, while he’d like to be back in Tampa Bay, he’s looking for a competitive offer as far as his market value, and it’s hard to see Mayfield doing anything but the same. That won’t happen in full until they know what offers they’re fielding in free agency in March.

Accordingly, while it would be beneficial to the Bucs to get a deal done by Monday (especially Evans), it seems unlikely that’ll be the case – at least for all or the majority of them. That means that Licht and his staff will be a little bit more hamstrung as far as available cap space to pull off new deals with all of his main in-house free agents as well as address some other key areas (i.e., secondary, edge, offensive line depth).

However, as he proved last year, don’t count out Licht’s ability to pull off some surprising moves when the salary cap is in question.