Vita Vea showed up to Buccaneers minicamp this month and then mostly stood around. That was the point.
Vea is doing what players call a hold-in. He is at the team facility, so he does not get fined, but he is sitting out the actual drills while his side and the Bucs work on a new contract. It is the polite version of a holdout, and for a guy who anchors the middle of Tampa's defense, it is a reasonable amount of leverage to use in late June.
Here is why the Bucs will probably get it done. Vea is a 2018 first-round pick, a nose tackle who eats double teams so the guys around him can make plays, and a Super Bowl champion from the 2020 run. He is not a stat-sheet player, which is exactly why interior defenders like him tend to be underpaid relative to their value. The market for defensive tackles reset hard this offseason, and Vea's camp knows it.
None of this is a crisis. Head coach Todd Bowles and the front office have stayed calm about it publicly, and Vea has given no indication he would actually miss regular season time. This is the normal summer dance between a good player and the team that wants to keep him. It usually ends with a handshake before training camp.
We put up a full set of Vita Vea plaques this week, and they pull from his real card runs going back to his rookie year.
The single-card 4x6 is the easy gift for the Bucs fan in your life. The 8-card 12x15 runs from his 2018 rookie cards through 2025, base and premium mixed together, and it is the one that earns a wall.
The exact card may vary slightly from the one pictured. You'll always get a genuine licensed card of this player.