Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Jon Gruden says he has accepted that one of the quarterbacks he has under contract, Jake Plummer, will never be a Buc, but that he still holds out hope for another of his quarterbacks, Chris Simms.

“He’s retired,” Gruden said of Plummer, adding, “We tried. That’s all I can say. I think still he’s one of the top quarterbacks on the planet, personally. I think his performance, his won-loss record speaks for itself. We traded a seventh-round draft choice basically for Jake Plummer and unfortunately he’s decided to stay retired.”

Tampa Bay isn’t completely done with Plummer: The team still says that when it acquired Plummer in a trade with the Broncos, it also acquired the right to force Plummer to pay back a portion of the bonus money he received from the Broncos. That issue has not yet been resolved, but what has been resolved is that Plummer is done playing in the NFL.

As for Simms, Gruden says, “Chris is under contract and we expect him to compete.”

But Simms is skipping the team’s off-season workouts. Simms appears to want out, and the Bucs will likely cut him at some point before the start of the regular season. Right now, however, Gruden is talking as if he hasn’t made a final decision on Simms.

“It’s hard to accommodate everyone’s wants and wishes,” Gruden said. “We paid Chris Simms $7.5 million. We want to win. He’s part of our plans and we want him to compete. We’re going to keep our best quarterbacks, I promise you that. Right now, we’ve got five quarterbacks and he’s one of them.”