Chris Godwin is now the last man standing from the old Bucs core

Chris Godwin still feels like he is in his 20s. He is 30 years old now, and lately, at One Buccaneer Place, that has started to make him the old man in the room. Being one of the older guys on the team has been strange, Godwin said in an interview this month quoted by JoeBucsFan, but "I still feel like I'm in my 20s, like mentally and physically."

He is not wrong about the calendar. Mike Evans signed with the San Francisco 49ers in March 2026, ending a 12-year run in Tampa Bay. Lavonte David, a Buccaneer since 2012, retired the following month. Between them, Evans and David gave Tampa Bay 26 combined seasons and anchored a locker room culture that outlasted four head coaches and produced a Super Bowl title. Now Godwin, a third-round pick from 2017, is the last one still on the roster.

The kid from Penn State

Tampa Bay drafted Godwin out of Penn State in the third round of the 2017 NFL draft, the 84th overall pick, after a college career in State College that produced 154 receptions, 2,421 yards and 18 touchdowns over three seasons. He arrived as a complementary piece, not a headline name, in a receiver room that already had Evans as its unquestioned number one.

Godwin's rookie season reflected that role: 34 receptions for 525 yards and a single touchdown across 16 games, mostly playing behind Evans and veteran DeSean Jackson. Jameis Winston, the number one overall pick from 2015, was the primary starting quarterback for Godwin's first three seasons in the league, and it was during those Winston years, 2017 through 2019, that Godwin's game started to take real shape. He nearly doubled his production in 2018 (59 catches, 842 yards, seven touchdowns), a solid but still secondary role behind Evans.

The 2019 breakout

Everything changed in 2019, the year Bruce Arians arrived in Tampa as head coach, hired on January 8, 2019, after coming out of retirement. Arians brought a downfield passing scheme built around receivers who could win one-on-one, and Godwin thrived in it. He caught 86 passes for 1,333 yards and nine touchdowns that season, made his first Pro Bowl, and earned second-team All-Pro honors. For the first time, Godwin was not just Evans' running mate. He was one of the best receivers in the NFL in his own right, a distinction that held for four different seasons between 2019 and 2023 in which he topped 1,000 receiving yards.

Brady, the Super Bowl, and a hand that would not cooperate

Tom Brady's arrival in 2020 turned Tampa Bay into an immediate championship contender, but Godwin's own 2020 season was a grind. He missed time to a concussion and a hamstring injury, then fractured his left index finger catching a touchdown pass against the Raiders in late October, an injury serious enough to require surgery that kept ten pins in his hand for a month. He still finished with 65 receptions, 840 yards and seven touchdowns in 12 games, and he was healthy enough by January to play a central role in Tampa Bay's postseason run. The Buccaneers beat the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LV in February 2021, the franchise's second championship, and Godwin's first.

The tag, the tear, and a new deal

Free agency loomed that same March, and the Buccaneers used the franchise tag on Godwin rather than let him test the open market. For readers unfamiliar with American sports labor rules, a franchise tag is a one-year, one-sided tool that lets a team keep a player out of free agency by paying him a guaranteed salary set by his position's top earners, in Godwin's case worth roughly $16 million for the 2021 season. He rewarded the bet with a career year: 98 receptions, 1,103 yards and six total touchdowns, his best statistical season as a pro.

Then, on December 19, 2021, in a Sunday night loss to the New Orleans Saints, Godwin caught a pass over the middle from Brady and took a direct hit to the knee from Saints cornerback P.J. Williams. He tore his ACL and MCL, ending his season immediately, with three regular season games still to play before the playoffs he had helped the Buccaneers reach.

Tampa Bay tagged Godwin a second time in March 2022 while he rehabbed the knee, then converted that tag into a three-year, $60 million contract extension on March 17, 2022, with $40 million guaranteed. It was, in effect, the Buccaneers betting on the receiver they had watched for five seasons rather than the one recovering from surgery. Godwin answered again: 104 receptions for 1,023 yards in 2022, then 83 for 1,024 in 2023, two more 1,000-yard seasons back to back.

Another injury, another vote of confidence

The pattern repeated itself in 2024. Godwin was off to arguably the best stretch of his career, leading the NFL in receptions through seven weeks, when a Monday night loss to the Baltimore Ravens ended his season again. Tackled by linebacker Roquan Smith after a 21-yard catch, Godwin dislocated his left ankle and needed surgery, finishing the year at 50 receptions, 576 yards and five touchdowns in just seven games.

Once more, Tampa Bay bet on him rather than moved on. On March 11, 2025, the Buccaneers signed Godwin to a new three-year, $66 million extension, with $44 million guaranteed, even as he was still working back from ankle surgery. The 2025 season showed exactly why that bet was a gamble: Godwin played only nine games, catching 33 passes for 360 yards and two touchdowns, still not fully himself.

By the spring of 2026, though, teammates and coaches started saying something different. After an organized team activity session in May, head coach Todd Bowles suggested the version of Godwin from before the injuries was reappearing. Teammate Jalen McMillan, asked about it, described a receiver who had never really changed his preparation at all. "He'd been doing the same thing he's been doing since I got here," McMillan said of Godwin's game-day routine that May, pointing to the same JUGS machine drills and breathing techniques Godwin has run for years. "He gets on me when I'm not doing the technique to a T," McMillan added, and he holds everybody in the room to that standard. Asked directly about Godwin's new status as the oldest man in the room, McMillan had a shorter answer: "That's Unc."

Season by season

A young room that leans on him

What changed around Godwin this year is not just Evans and David leaving. It is who replaced them. As BucsWorld covered in Life after Mike Evans: who catches the 1,000 yards now, Tampa Bay's 2026 receiver room is built almost entirely from recent draft picks: Emeka Egbuka, the 19th overall pick in 2025, entering his second season; Jalen McMillan, a 2024 third-round pick, entering his third; and Tez Johnson, a seventh-round pick from the 2025 draft, also entering his second year. The only other veteran in the room, David Sills V, joined the Buccaneers as a free agent in April 2026 after years with several other franchises.

That leaves Godwin, the 2017 third-rounder, as the only player in the room who was on the roster before 2024, let alone before Egbuka and Johnson were drafted. In the September 2026 conversation about his new role, Godwin described the dynamic in almost affectionate terms, calling his younger teammates "a bunch of young guys, but a bunch of like highly talented guys" who "bring such great energy." Those same teammates describe him back as something between a big brother and an assistant coach, especially in film sessions, where his standards for technique do not bend for anyone's rookie status.

What it means for Sunday

None of this is abstract for Tampa Bay entering the 2026 opener at the Cincinnati Bengals on September 13. A receiver room this inexperienced, missing its most accomplished veteran of the last decade, needs someone who has already lived through a torn ACL, a dislocated ankle, two franchise tags and a Super Bowl run to set the tone, on the practice field and in the huddle. Godwin has outlasted Winston, outlasted the Arians era, outlasted Evans and David, largely by absorbing one significant injury after another and finding his way back onto the field each time.

The 30-year-old who still feels like he is in his 20s is now the answer to a question nobody asked him to answer a decade ago: who is left to show the next generation of Buccaneers receivers how it is done. For a European audience that mostly met this team through the Brady years, Godwin is the last thread connecting that championship roster to whatever comes next.