Jake Plummer never collected a penny from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but they’re about to collect $3.5 million from him.

Stephen Holder of the St. Petersburg Times reports that the team and Plummer, who retired shortly after the Bucs acquired him in a trade with the Broncos, have reached a settlement in their longstanding grievance.

The terms of the settlement are that Plummer will pay the Bucs half of the $7 million in bonus money that the team said it was entitled to collect. As a result, a scheduled grievance hearing has been canceled.

Plummer was the Broncos’ starting quarterback until he got benched for Jay Cutler late in the 2006 season. He was traded to the Bucs during the 2007 off-season, but decided to retire rather than report to the team.

By trading for Plummer, the Buccaneers had also acquired the right to go after Plummer’s bonus money, and that’s what they did. As Holder has previously reported, the Buccaneers weren’t just going after the money, they were also going after the salary cap space that gets credited back to teams after they collect money from players. Assuming all goes according to plan from here, the Bucs should get an additional $3.5 million credited to their 2009 salary cap.