TAMPA BAY, Fla. — In the NFL, no one wants to hear about your hardships.

No one cares about nuance, and no one is calling the morning radio host to applaud a team’s due diligence.

Lost your quarterback? Find another. Got a salary cap problem? Not my concern. Bellyache all you want from the day after one game until the day before the next but, come kickoff, the world only cares if the scoreboard is in your favor.

Strangely enough, Jason Licht is good with that.

You see, these are supposed to be dark days for the Tampa Bay Buccaneerss general manager. Less than three years after being fitted for a Super Bowl ring, the Bucs were spectacularly overdrawn on the salary cap in 2023. Didn’t matter. They haven’t had a pick in the top 15 of the draft since 2020. Hasn’t mattered. The head coach stepped down, the most accomplished quarterback in history retired, and 15 of the 22 starters from Super Bowl 55 are gone. Big deal.

Poke your head in the doorway of the AdventHealth Training Center and Licht is still smiling. No, scratch that. He’s cracking jokes. He’s teasing, laughing and greeting each morning with the confidence of a man planning a postseason party.

Somehow, the Bucs have rebuilt a roster without going through the heartache of a rebuilding season.

Since going for broke and overspending to win that Super Bowl, the Bucs have gone 30-21 and won three consecutive division titles with a pair of playoff wins mixed in. And now they’re coming into 2024 with Mike Evans, Baker Mayfield, Antoine Winfield Jr. and Tristan Wirfs all signed to new multiyear deals.

How is that possible?

“We had to have a plan to get out of our salary cap hell. Just had to,” Licht said. “So we had to be careful in the contracts that we were shelling out. It was tough just getting under the cap, I mean we’re talking like $2,000 under the ($224.8 million) cap. We had to plan it out and do it with the right people.”

That meant not spending a lot of money on free agents. That meant allowing icons such as Evans and Lavonte David to play 2023 under expiring deals. That meant cutting ties with some homegrown players who were moving on from their rookie contracts.

Mostly, that meant finding a quarterback to replace Tom Brady at a fraction of the cost.

“We knew we were going to suffer for a couple of years with $80 million-plus in dead money, which I think was a record last year,” Licht said. “So we had to take the gamble on the quarterback. It’s not going to work without that quarterback.

“Baker had a higher ceiling than all of the other quarterbacks out there, he was a No. 1 overall pick, and he was a guy we liked a lot coming out of college. He had a couple of good years and then some bad luck and bad years and injuries and other things going on. Was it a little bit of luck on our part? Yeah, but there was also a lot of belief in our head coach with Baker. It wouldn’t have worked without him.”

There were 36 quarterbacks making more money than Mayfield’s $4 million base salary last season, but only eight won more games as a starter. You could make the argument that, other than Joe Flacco, there wasn’t another veteran player who provided more value per dollar in the NFL than Mayfield last season.

Of course, the success wasn’t his alone. Because they couldn’t chase or retain a lot of veterans due to the salary cap situation, the Bucs absolutely needed their draft picks to fill critical roles. And that’s where Licht and his team have really shined.

Wirfs, Winfield, K.J. Britt, Joe Tryon-Shoyinka, Robert Hainsey, Logan Hall, Luke Goedeke, Rachaad White, Cade Otton, Jake Camarda, Zyon McCollum, Calijah Kancey, Cody Mauch and Yaya Diaby were all contributors last season while still playing under their rookie contracts.

That’s a ton of production at minimal cost, which made up for the $80 million already lost from the machinations of past payroll maneuvers.

And now the Bucs are coming out the other side of those salary cap days with a core group of stars signed for several years and a lot of those draft picks still around and contributing.

“Everybody wants to draft well. Every year you want to draft well. But we HAD to draft well. We HAD to have young players on rookie deals,” Licht said. “We couldn’t sign (free agents), we had to restrain ourselves from making deals we couldn’t afford.

“And in that restraint, you come to realize that (free agents) are not always the answer. I’d rather reward our own guys than go through free agency. We were handcuffed, we couldn’t if we wanted, but now maybe we see another way. We’re still going to sign free agents in the future, but we just gave a lot of those high-dollar deals to our own.”

Did the Bucs have some good fortune with the NFC South going through a rough spell? Absolutely. And is it possible that they have a more talented team this season but won’t win the division because Atlanta and New Orleans have improved? Yeah, that could happen.

But the fact remains that Tampa Bay is one of only three teams to have made the playoffs four consecutive seasons.

Stuff like this doesn’t happen often in today’s NFL. The league is designed to pull everyone to the middle. Even for great teams, rebuilding seasons are more the norm than the exception.

Since the salary cap was introduced in 1994, there have been only four franchises that have won a Super Bowl and then managed to follow up with three consecutive division titles. The Brady-led Patriots are obviously one. The Patrick Mahomes Chiefs are another. Aaron Rodgers and the Packers are the third.

And now, here comes the Bucs. The only team to pull it off while changing head coaches and quarterbacks.

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