First, he had to replace safety John Lynch. Now he has been asked to take over for Derrick Brooks.

Phillips was surprised when coach Raheem Morris asked him to attempt a position switch to weakside linebacker this off-season, a position manned the last 14 years by Brooks, the 11-time Pro Bowl player who was released Feb. 25.

"Oh man, it crossed mind," Phillips said. "When they asked me, I was like first Lynch, now Brooks. Who's going to be next?'

"But I look at it like this: nobody can ever replace a John Lynch, nobody can ever replace a Derrick Brooks. What they've done for the game of football is unmatched. All I can do is go out there and play the (Will) linebacker position the best way I can. Hopefully, everybody will learn to love me the way they loved them."

Phillips, who turns 30 later this month, signed a one-year contract that will pay him a base salary of $1.25-million in 2009.

There were several factors in the decision to move Phillips to linebacker. The Bucs are committed to playing third-year pro Sabby Piscitelli at strong safety. Geno Hayes tore the medial collateral ligament in his knee last season and may not be ready until May to compete at full speed, at the earliest. And the Bucs haven't had any success adding a linebacker through free agency.

"Two weeks ago, (Phillips) was still on the market. He wasn't even here," linebackers coach Joe Barry said. "I think it's been a bunch of things, with us not signing a guy, with us signing (Phillips) back, with a guy or two being banged up.

"But the bottom line with moving Jermaine is that Jermaine Phillips is a hell of a football player. He's a physical presence. ... There are guys who have the tag of being a physical presence in the secondary and a hitter and all that stuff. Jermaine Phillips is a load. He will knock you out.' Those are the reasons we felt comfortable even thinking about this."

Because Phillips played in a lot of eight-man fronts at safety, walking down to "the box," just four yards from the line of scrimmage, he is comfortable shedding blocks and playing in a confined space.

Phillips said Morris did not have to do a sales job to convince him to move to linebacker.

"He knows me and knows I'm a team guy and I want to win," Phillips said. "He said, 'This is your choice, your decision.' I said, 'Well, the only way I'm going to know if I'm going to like it is if I try it so I'm willing to give it a try and see how it goes and we'll go from there.'"

"It's still an experiment, it's still early on in the phases of me becoming a linebacker. But I think it's something they feel that I can do and I feel that I can do. I just want to be as effective as I was as a safety and make the team better."

The Bucs said they were committed to getting younger when they released five veteran players last month, including Brooks and starting strong side linebacker Cato June. Third-year pro Quincy Black, 25, is competing at June's old spot with Adam Hayward, 24, who has played both outside linebacker positions. The Bucs also signed Bills free agent linebacker Angelo Crowell to a 1-year, $3-million contract. That leaves Hayes, 21, competing with Phillips for the weakside spot anchored by the future Hall of Famer.

Hayes drew comparisons to Brooks when he played at Florida State, but he will not try to imitate him.

"They're some big shoes to fill, but to be your own man, you have to wear your own shoes."

At 6-foot-2, 230-pounds, Phillips is small by NFL standards to play linebacker but roughly the same size or bigger than Brooks and June. But durability is a concern. He broke both forearms last season and has fractured his arms four times throughout his career. Phillips said he will wear pads on both arms. "We'll pad it up no matter how it looks. Call me Ironman," Phillips said.

Barry said the plan is to leave Phillips at linebacker, not to have him play both positions during the minicamps and off-season workouts.

"Right now, he's a linebacker," Barry said. "We'll see where it goes. Maybe a month from now, we'll re-evaluate the situation and see if we're going to keep him there or we want to move him back. But he's a linebacker as far as he's concerned and as far as we're concerned.

"I'm excited about it, I really am. The thing Jermaine brings to the table is the physical presence, he's a guy who can get down there and mix it up. I think that's why when we started talking about it, we felt comfortable about it and the fact we did so much before in our old package with having the safeties in the box and (Phillips) has played such a big role in that the last five or six years. We were like, "You know what? He's done it from a safety standpoint. Let's see instead of dropping down in the box whether he can line up in the box four yards off the ball and play linebacker. With it being in the middle of March, if you're going to experiment with something, now is the time to do it."