Opinion: It’s Wide Receiver or Bust for the Buccaneers in Round One
The NFL Draft is still months away for the Buccaneers and the other 31 teams who will be competing for a Super Bowl title in the 2017 season. Even now however, there seems to be a picture forming of what direction the team needs to go in the first round of this year’s selection meeting.
For a team like the Buccaneers one thing is known. While they were ever so close to claiming a playoff spot, they are in need of some added talent to their roster to become a legitimate threat out of the NFC South.
Picking 19th means a couple of things: First, it means your team finished right around the middle of the pack and are on the cusp of cresting the wave and roaring into the post-season or having the rug pulled out from under you sending your roster toppling back into what the NBA would consider it’s lottery picks.
The New England Patriots are pros at finding the players needed to keep them on the playoff side of this wave, while the San Francisco 49ers have just about hit Cleveland depths of rock bottom after player retirements, injuries and other – we’ll call them – departures have left their roster depleted and playoff hopes vanished.
It’s not easy to continuously ride the wave of success, and one wrong move can send a team crashing faster than their general manager can say T.J. Houshmandzadeh.
This bring us to our beloved Buccaneers and their current position within the league which will lead into the coming months’ worth of decisions and eventually a top-pick in the draft. I say top pick, because it doesn’t necessarily need to be a first-round pick to be successful.
What do I mean? Well, let’s look at the situation unfolding.
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The Receivers
Two things are perhaps the funniest about the time leading to the draft. One being the way a player can climb boards like King Kong scaling a skyscraper, and the other being how easily a guy can fall, all the while playing zero games during the entire process.
Jabrill Peppers is already experiencing this as the once Top-5 prospect in the nation now finds himself surrounded by nay-sayers who claim he may not be worth any better than a mid-second round selection. For the record, I’m one of them.
Two names however, have been linked to the Buccaneers trademark more than perhaps any others, and those are wide receivers Corey Davis from Western Michigan and John Ross from the University of Washington.
Both provide speed while the Husky has more of it, and both provide the ability to work downfield, while the Bronco has proven to be the more productive.
If both men are on the board when the 19th pick starts getting counted down then the franchise is certainly in a position to draft a guy who could single-handedly turn Jameis Winston into a quarterback who throws 30 touchdowns in a single season.
If they don’t draft one of these two because they aren’t available or they simply don’t see the position as a first-round need, then which direction do they go?