The Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ draft in April raised questions about cornerback Jamel Dean‘s future with the NFL team.

“If he catches the balls that he drops, we wouldn’t even be talking about this,” Tampa Bay cornerbacks coach Kevin Ross said about Dean last week. “He’s got to catch the ball, he’s got to stay healthy, and he’ll be fine.”

But those things haven’t happened the past two years, and the Buccaneers used their second-round pick on Notre Dame cornerback Benjamin Morrison and their third-round pick on Kansas State cornerback Jacob Parrish in the NFL Draft on April 25.

That wasn’t surprising. At the league meetings in March, Tampa Bay general manager Todd Licht said, “We could use some help there” when asked about cornerback, and Bucs coach Todd Bowles said about the position, “We don’t have a lot of depth, and we hope to address that at some point in the draft.”

Licht also said Dean “was a really good player not too long ago.”

That was when Tampa Bay signed him to a four-year, $52 million contract extension in 2023 rather than allow him to become a free agent after he’d reached the end of the four-year, $3.559 million contract signed as a third-round draft pick from Auburn in 2019.

At that point in Dean’s career, opposing quarterbacks had a 73.6 passing-efficiency rating when throwing against him in 57 regular-season games. Dean also had played in seven playoff games and started all four postseason games as Tampa Bay capped the 2020 season with a 31-9 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LV.

In his first four seasons, Dean had seven interceptions and 41 passes defended. Since signing the contract extension, Dean has one interception and 11 passes defended. The passing-efficiency rating when throwing against Dean was 100.27 in the past two seasons.

Dean missed four games in 2023 and five games in 2024 with injuries. He played 63.2 percent of Tampa Bay’s defensive snaps in 2023 and 62.4 percent in 2024.

“Dean’s got to get healthy,” Bowles said in March. “He comes in and he plays. He can’t play half a year every couple of years, and he understands he’s got to get healthy. He’s doing everything he can to be healthy, but we’ve got to have some depth there just in case. If somebody comes in and competes with him, he’s going to have to compete.”

Ross said when NFL teams draft cornerbacks as early as the Buccaneers did this year, “you expect them to play, you expect them to contribute.”

Where does that leave Dean, who has no guaranteed money remaining in his contract, for the 2025 season?

“Jamel Dean, he’s going to be OK,” Ross said. “I was in that situation (as a player) in Kansas City. We drafted a first-round corner, Dale Carter. We brung in James Hasty from the Jets. That’s the nature of this business. You’re trying to upgrade. You’re trying to keep your team up, ready for the season and everything, so he’ll be ready. Everybody’ll be ready. It’s good for the backfield.”

But Dean has to stay on the field to compete.

“Availability is the No. 1 thing,” Ross said. “Knock on wood, I hope he’s healthy the whole year. But unfortunately, he hasn’t been. We haven’t played with the same secondary since God knows when here. It’s good to have these other guys come in and contribute.”

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on X at @AMarkG1.