SI.com: Mike Greenberg Future Hot GM Candiate
June 19th, 2026
“Greeny, just don’t chew on a Gatorade bottle in the interview and you will be fine.”
Back when the NFL regular season finished, list season for some began right away.
(Yes, Joe is like a squirrel with nuts: He reads an interesting story with no time element involved and he stores the nuts for when food is scarce to get him through the weeks between the end of underwear football season and the start of training camp.)
This is one example.
Albert Breer of SI.com put together a list of his top future general manager candidates. In it, Breer includes Bucs assistant general manager and head capologist Mike Greenberg.
Buccaneers assistant GM Mike Greenberg
Greenberg’s background is on the cap side, but over the last few years he and since-departed John Spytek, now the Raiders GM, became Jason Licht’s closest confidants, which exposed Greenberg to every area of the operation. He also showed an ability to pivot in setting the team’s cap up without any debt, which allowed the team to turn and build aggressively after landing Tom Brady in 2020. And since Brady retired, Greenberg’s helped engineer a youth movement, infusing the roster with a bevy of draft picks that have formed a new core around Baker Mayfield, with a clean cap and the team set to play for a fifth straight division title this weekend.
Breer is right. Greenberg is a wizard with the salary cap and that’s his background. But he’s a very smart guy so Joe is sure some of Bucs AC/DC-loving general manager Jason Licht’s football acumen has rubbed off on him.
But Joe is also guessing Greenberg, if he did become a general manager elsewhere (he has interviewed for past openings) would bring in a football guy he knows and/or trusts as his right-hand man. That would likely mean he would cherry-pick someone from the Bucs (vice president of player personnel Mike Biehl for example) or maybe someone Spytek would recommend from the Raiders.
There’s a reason why Team Glazer and Licht have kept Greenberg aboard the Bucs pirate ship as a numberscruncher for some 16 years. Shot-callers tend to want to keep strong employees, unless you’re lousy Lovie Smith.