Buccaneers Sign Angelo Crowell

After releasing Cato June and Derrick Brooks to open the offseason, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have quite a need for some help at the linebacker position. Apparently, they're not only willing to scour the free-agent market, but also think outside the box -- or blindly throw darts at the wall, depending on your perspective -- when it comes to improving the position.

On Wednesday, the team signed free-agent linebacker Angelo Crowell, formerly of the Buffalo Bills, to compete for the strongside linebacker spot. The Buccaneers also plan to move safety Jermaine Phillips to weakside linebacker.

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Terms of Crowell's deal were not made available; he's expected to compete with Quincy Black and Adam Hayward at strongside linebacker. Crowell missed the entire 2008 season due to injury, but averaged 109 tackles the three previous seasons in Buffalo.

Meanwhile, as the team looks for its replacement at the weakside position, word has surfaced that Phillips will compete for the spot that was occupied by Brooks for the past 15 seasons. Talk about big shoes to fill. Phillips is listed as being 6-foot-2, 220-pounds, which is a similar build to Brooks (6-foot, 230) and June (6-foot, 227). According to Phillips, he's not going to add weight to make the switch.

Here's what defensive coordinator Joe Barry had to say, from Pewter Report:

"This is kind of a unique deal for me in the sense that I'm new being back here, but I remember Flip when we drafted him in 2002 and him being a little snot-nosed rookie during our Super Bowl year. I have a great relationship with him and a lot of history with him," Barry said. "I'm excited about it. I really am. I think the things that Jermaine brings to the table are being a physical presence. He's a guy that can get down there and mix it up, and when we started talking about it, we felt comfortable with it in the fact that we did so much before with our old package with having the safeties in the box.

I guess I can understand where the Bucs are coming from here. As Barry explains it, Phillips spends a lot of his time hanging out near the line of scrimmage and stuffing the run anyway, so why not just make him a linebacker and be done with it?

Makes sense ... in theory. But wouldn't it have made more sense to use some of the $50 million in cap space and bring in a real linebacker, as opposed to seeing if a 30-year-old safety can successfully make the switch?

Phillips was credited with 59 tackles and three interceptions in 2008 as a safety.