Bucs Pass Rusher Shaq Barrett Is Ready To Get Paid In Free Agency

Shaquil Barrett signed a one-year, prove-it deal with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2019. After rewarding them with a league-leading 19.5 sacks, the team chose to put the franchise tag on the star pass rusher in 2020.

Barrett's second regular season in Tampa didn't yield the same results, but he still racked up eight sacks to go along with 16 quarterback hits. He saved his best work for the postseason, though. Between the NFC Championship and Super Bowl LV, he had four sacks and eight QB hits.

In other words, the 28-year-old knows how to get after the quarterback, and he's now done it for two straight seasons. That means he's not interested in going with another short-term deal.

The man wants to get paid, and he reiterated that sentiment during a recent interview with Adam Schein on SiriusXM's Mad Dog Sports Radio.

"I'm most definitely looking forward to getting a long-term deal done," Barrett told Schein, via NFL.com. "I feel like it's time for me to break the bank now, and I most definitely want to do that to be able to set my family up better and most definitely going to keep producing, so it's not like anything is going to fall off. I still think I got a lot left in the tank.

I'm still getting better, actually. I'm still learning, like just still learning, like week in, week out. And there's, like, as you can see as the season progressed, like ... I ended the season playing the way that I wanted to play. And you can see that I did progress throughout the season, and I'm still progressing."

Barrett was willing to take the one-year, $15.8 million deal under the franchise tag. Yes, he was coming off a phenomenal season, but it was one year. Prior to that, he had rotational snaps and limited production for the Denver Broncos.

Now, he's earned a big pay day, and he expects one. Good for him.

Follow Clint Lamb on Twitter @ClintRLamb.