Prop Points | July 28, 2026

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This is Prop Points on VSiN, the Sports Betting Network.

**Nick Whalen** (0:11)
Welcome in to Prop Points here on VSiN, the Sports Betting Network. I'm Nick Whalen. He's Jeff Erickson. We're here with you from rotowire.com. I'm going to be hanging out for the next hour.
Got a great show coming your way. We'll talk a little Vita Vea trade request coming out of Tampa Bay, what that means for the Bucs, what that means for what's ultimately a messy and muddled NFC South Division. We'll hit some baseball headlines from last night as well. We'll give you plenty of baseball plays throughout the show. We'll have Keith Irizarry stopping by the Progressive Guest Line with his Tuesday MLB card. We'll get Jeff's Best Bets later in the show. We'll talk some fantasy football, specifically the quarterback position with our guy, Theo Gremminger from rotowire.com. Double guest Tuesday here on Prop Points. Before we dig in on the Vita Vea news, make sure if you are not listening to Prop Points in podcast form, you should be. You can find us on Apple, on Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcast, just search VSiN, search Prop Points. You'll find us, you'll find all VSiN programming in podcast form.
All right, Jeff, fairly slow news day as we get training camps underway in the NFL. We've had, you know, some minor news leaking out. Patrick Mahomes looks to be very close to being a full participant for the Kansas City Chiefs. And we'll, we'll talk about that a little bit later, but did get word earlier this morning, two-time pro bowler defensive tackle Vita Vea has officially requested a trade from the Buccaneers. They've been at odds over a potential extension. The Buccaneers also are somewhat at odds, maybe not to the point of requesting a trade with Peter Mayfield, who will be playing on the final year of his deal in 2026 But I'll ask you first and foremost, Jeff, is this a real trade request? Are the Buccaneers going to entertain this? Is this merely a negotiating tactic from Vita Vea?

**Jeff Erickson** (1:59)
You know, I dismissed the possibility of a real trade request coming from Michael Parsons last year and look how that ended. So you never want to totally dismiss it out of hand that a team is going to act that way or how they're going to react to a situation like this. It is that time of season where we don't, you know, local markets are hyper aware of which players need to be signed on their teams. But from a national perspective, we don't always hone in on this during the off season. Then we get to training camp like, oh yeah, Vita Vea is unhappy. He won't ask for a trade request. Chris Gonzalez is under contract, but he's negotiating right now. Oh yeah, that's happening. And every year there's one of those players that sneaks up on us and really blows up. And right now it's Vea is the one that's blowing up.
I think it's a critical year for the Bucs here too, for Todd Bowles, for Baker Mayfield. They missed the playoffs last year. They had that horrible game against the Panthers in the week 18, where they missed out. Despite finishing off the collapse of a season where they were one of the trendy teams, Baker Mayfield was an MVP candidate and they just fizzled so badly down the stretch.
We may have kind of run the course on this iteration of the team though, if Mayfield's gone, if Bowles is gone. They have a lot of new young players already stepping in. There's no more Mike Evans. There's a lot of changes on defense right now. Vea is like the old guard on this team. So yeah, it's one of those things where he may be unhappy at the direction of the team. Maybe he's just, it's a negotiation tactic. Hard to get inside the head. There might be all, it might be one of those where like, hey, it is a negotiation tactic, but maybe I truly do want to be gone there too.

**Nick Whalen** (3:31)
Did just get word by the way that Jalen Carter has agreed to a four year extension with the Philadelphia Eagles. So Buccaneers at odds with one of their defensive tackles, Eagles lock in one of the best young defenders in the NFL. We'll keep you posted when the figures on that deal come out, but should be a Mammoth contract for Jalen Carter. Look, I'm with you, Jeff, as far as the outlook for the Buccaneers. I didn't necessarily go into this off season feeling like, all right, it's going to be one last ride, but yeah, you look around, you have problems with Vita Vea, as far as locking him up longterm. We'll see where they end up settling with Baker Mayfield. Mike Evans, of course, has moved on. Chris Godwin has spent most of the last two years injured, and I'm pretty high on him this year, as far as the bounce back and fantasy goes, but he's also one of those guys where you're starting to look at the end of his prime years. And I think Tampa Bay does need to start thinking about the next phase of this team. Nonetheless, Jeff, they are sizable favorites in the NFC South. Buccaneers plus 154 to win the division. Then he got the Saints up plus 265, Carolina plus 310, the Atlanta Falcons all the way up at plus 425