It’s genius week at One Buc Place.
It’s the week when everyone admires your brain.
Throughout the history of the Tampa Bay Bucs, of course, there have been a lot of mental lapses. But no one ever talks about them during draft week. The week the Bucs drafted Bo Jackson, why, they were the smartest kids in the room. No one knew he was going to play baseball instead.
The week they picked Keith McCants, the Bucs were golden. They had a player who could play defensive end or linebacker. Turns out, he couldn’t play either one.
Through the years, that’s how it went. They could draft Gaines Adams or Kenyatta Walker or Vinny Testaverde, and the Bucs looked positively cerebral. It was only later that the stupidity set in.
So here they go again, about to pick a player, probably Jameis Winston, with the idea of turning a bad franchise around. So picture Bucs’ general manager Jason Licht on Friday morning, the day after the decision. Everyone will think he’s slick, he’s smart.
And then it will be time to do it again with the 34th overall pick.
So what do you think? Offensive tackle? Defensive end?
Depending on who is on the board, you could make a reasoned argument for both. Heck, you could even argue that the Bucs should consider moving back into the first round to catch a falling star. You could argue for another position. A linebacker, maybe. A corner. A running back.
Pretty much, though, taking a quarterback first stresses that you need to go with either someone to rush the passer, or someone to protect him.
In the long run, that might be as important as the first pick. The first pick will take years for most of us to decide upon. Odds are, he’ll have good times and bad times. Most young players do.
But you cannot underestimate how important the second round pick will be to the Bucs. You can talk all you want about the first-round misses in the Bucs’ history: Jackson. Testaverde. Ray Snell, McCants. Charles McRae. Eric Curry. Josh Freeman. Gaines Adams. Kenyatta Walker. Regan Upshaw, Michael Clayton, Mark Barron. Others.
There was so much talent wasted there. Some years, the Bucs simply got less of an athlete than they expected. The player was stiffer than they wanted. He didn’t love the game enough. He wanted to play baseball, as Jackson did. Most of the time, the Bucs expected that young player to lift a franchise. He couldn’t.
But the Bucs have fared even worse in the second round, where they have thrown darts while blindfolded. Time and again, they have come up empty. Booker Reese. Lars Tate, Demetrius Dubose, Melvin Johnson. Dewayne White, Jeremy Trueblood. Dexter Jackson (the receiver), Sabby Piscatelli. Brian Price. Aurelius Benn. Da’Quan Bowers. Others.
It is such a history of mysterious picks, picks who simply couldn’t play. Jackson never caught a pass. If Piscatelli ever made a tackle, I’m not sure anyone remembers. Think about it. As bad as the Bucs have usually been, those guys couldn’t even play here.
So this one is important to get right. Because if the Bucs aren’t solid around their next new quarterback, neither the player nor the program has a chance to go anywhere.
It’s funny. The closer it gets to the draft, the more questions arise on Winston. You’d think he had thrown 12 interceptions in March. But that’s the way the draft works. People worry about his weight. People worry about his interceptions. People worry about past comparisons.
Perhaps the silliest thing said about Winston was when Ron Jaworski said last week that his sources in the NFL suggested the Bucs were going to take Marcus Mariota instead. Now, they might take Mariota. Who really knows? But NFL sources aren’t saying it, because NFL sources don’t know. The Bucs aren’t talking to anyone. I’m not sure Joel Glazer is talking to Bryan.
The second silliest thing said was that reckless comparison that an NFL general manager, hiding behind anonymity, made between Winston and former bust Jamarcus Russell. Are you kidding me? The only things those two have in common are that they’re both African American and they both played for Jimbo Fisher.
But Winston’s love of the game far exceeds Russell’s. His polish far exceeds Russell. His leadership abilities far exceed Russell’s. Granted, there are questions about Winston, and some of them you’ve read here. No one is a sure thing. But if Winston fails, it won’t be because Russell failed. He’ll do it all on his own.
I’ve said it before. There is a reasoned argument to be made for Mariota. There is a reason all those teams — the Chargers and the Eagles and the Jets and the Browns and the Rams and the Bears — are talking about trading up for Mariota instead of Winston.
Once the Bucs have made their decision on Winston, however, the heavy lifting has just begun.
Again, you could eat up most of a morning at work debating whether the Bucs need an offensive lineman more than they need a defensive end. In a perfect world, both a right end and a defensive tackle are jewels.
If you’re looking for a clue, here’s one. In free agency, the Bucs landed George Johnson, who can at least line up at end. They didn’t sign any offensive linemen.
That would seem to lean toward drafting a tackle, and that’s the way most of the mock drafts have gone. Oregon’s Jake Fisher is the fashionable pick at No. 2, although you can find T.J. Clemings of Pitt, Cedric Ogbuehi of Texas A&M, Cameron Irvin of FSU and Ty Sambrailo of Colorado State in various mocks. Yes, you can also find UCLA defensive end Owamagbe Odighizuwa mentioned, too.
This time, the Bucs need to get it right both times. And a third time. And maybe a find later in the draft. It’s time the franchise stopped spinning its wheels. The first rounder, and the second rounder, need to be big-time players immediately.
It’s a hard thing, looking for great success on a franchise where there have been so many misses.
But if the franchise is start to turn around here, it needs to be smart.
Not just the morning after, but a lot of mornings after.
