With the 34th overall pick in the 2015 draft, the Buccaneers selected Donovan Smith out of Penn State, and four full season later, he is set to hit free agency. Well, sort of. Nobody expects Smith to hit the open market, and it is almost inevitable that he will have the franchise tag applied to him.
For the team to retain his services, they will have to pay Smith $14 million while Jason Licht and his team bides themselves one more season to negotiate a long-term deal with their starting left tackle. Smith is worth every penny of this $14 million that he is about to receive, and given the deals that fellow left tackles Taylor Lewan, Nate Solder, and Jake Matthews have signed over the past two years, Smith could be looking at anywhere between $14.