The Tampa Bay Buccaneers received a dose of player drama on Tuesday when ESPN's Jenna Laine reported star linebacker Devin White is "fed up" and wants out of Tampa Bay. 

ESPN's Adam Schefter followed up Laine's report with a tweet stating the Buccaneers don't want to trade White, which makes sense. He's in the last year of his rookie deal, is a productive player, and is a former top-5 draft pick. Unless there are dire reasons, the Bucs really shouldn't be entertaining the thought of a trade.

But, what if they are entertaining the thought? What would they get in return?

The most relevant and accurate example/comparison would be last year's trade of Roquan Smith. Much like White and the Bucs, Smith, a former top-10 pick of the Chicago Bears, wanted a big contract that general manager Ryan Poles and co. weren't willing to dish out. 

So, the Bears traded Smith to the Baltimore Ravens in exchange for second- and fifth-round draft picks and linebacker A.J. Klein. The Ravens then signed Smith to a massive five-year, $100 million extension that made him the highest-paid linebacker in NFL history.

The first starting point in figuring out how much the Buccaneers could get in a White trade is to compare White's and Smith's stats over their first four years in the NFL. The numbers in parenthesis reflect their NFL ranking among inside/off-ball linebackers:

Player	Career PFF Grade	Total Tackles	Solo Tackles	Sacks	Interceptions	Forced Fumbles	TFLs	QB Hits	Missed Tackle %
Devin White	44.7	483 (4th)	315 (4th)	20.5 (1st)	2 (t-33rd)	6 (5th)	35 (2nd)	55 (1st)	10.5% (43rd)
Roquan Smith	58.5	524 (2nd)	348 (1st)	14.0 (4th)	5 (3rd)	1 (t-30th)	43 (1st)	17 (11th)	5.9% (eighth-lowest)

As you can see, both players have put up close-to-similar numbers, but Smith compiled his stats despite playing in one less game (61) than White (62) over his first four years in the league.

The difference between the two is clear: Smith is much better in coverage, whereas White is a better pass rusher. Smith is still an effective pass rusher, however, and has far fewer lapses in his play. He is a lot less risk-averse of a player than White. 

It's very likely the Buccaneers can receive as high as a second-rounder if they traded White, but there's one key difference between the potential timing of his hypothetical trade and the actual timing of the Smith trade: Smith was traded mid-season, therefore, the Bears ate $4,310,588.24 of Smith's $9.160 million salary, which means Smith cost the Ravens just $4,849,411.76 at the time of the trade. 

White, on the other hand, will cost his new team a little more than $11.7 million before anyone kind of new deal/extension is reached. That's nearly a $7 million difference.

There's obviously no exact science when it comes to the structure of NFL trades, but that difference, along with White's consistency issues, could be enough to drop a second round pick to a third. The fifth-rounder may be in play, still, but if I'm an NFL GM, White's price tag is certainly a factor in whatever deal I'm working out.

The Klein aspect of the Bears-Ravens trade would typically factor into this, but the Bears cut the veteran 15 days after acquiring him, so it's clear he was a random cherry on top, so to speak.

In all, it's fair to say trading White would net a third- and seventh-round pick, at worst. Right now, even with the likelihood of an extension that lower's White's 2022 cap hit, it's hard for me to see White netting anything more than a third- and fifth-rounder, at best. Don't forget, even if White's new team extends him to lower the 2022 hit, they're still giving him a fat contract of upward $20+ million that balances things out.