There is one thing that continues to haunt my mind though.  I have a good friend who works at a restaurant in the Tampa Bay Area.  About a month and a half ago, he called me after work and said that Radio Raheem, Ronde Barber and Sabby “SoSo Awful” Piscatelli had been eating dinner at his restaurant that evening.  This particular friend, is not one that you would call a die hard sports fan.  He did call me to let me know that Radio was gushing over Jason Pierre-Paul the whole evening.  He happened to know who this was, despite his lack of any real in depth sports knowledge, because he graduated from USF.

I don’t watch a plethora of college football games.  I tend to watch a lot of highlights, video of highlights and games for top level teams moreso than watching games between SMU and Hawaii at 11pm on Saturday night.  I did watch quite a few USF games though, and while JPP seems like a physical freak, he was just not a player that I watched and thought, holy shit, this guy is going to be an NFL star.  This of course is about as non-scientific of an evaluation as you can get.  I think the fancy Youtube video of him backflipping all over the field is nice and all, but I could care less about back flips from my DE’s, I want sacks.

His 6 college sacks, only 2 of which came against top 3 round level tackle talent, is a little troubling for a guy who some are claiming to be the premier edge rusher of the draft.  He just didn’t seem to have that explosive first step that is necessary to produce double digit sacks.  Hell, he barely had half of a double digit sack total in a below average BCS conference.

FootballOutsiders, one of my favorite websites to read, put out an article yesterday about a new stat they have called SackSEER.  It evaluates edge rushers based on the following criteria:

There are four main factors that correlate to sack success in the NFL: vertical leap, short shuttle time, sacks per game in college (with some playing time adjustments), and how many eligible games worth of NCAA football the player missed for any reason (except early entry into the NFL Draft). SackSEER projects each prospect’s total sacks through five years, which is roughly the average length of the rookie contract received by a first- or second-round pick. Although the individual trends are small, when considered together, they project sack production approximately three times more accurately than a player’s draft position within the first two rounds. Overall, SackSEER accounts for approximately 40 percent of the historical variation among these players’ accumulated five-year sack totals.

Very interesting stuff, and completely unsold on JPP as a pro prospect.  He actually ranked out as one of the lowest edge rushers that has top 2 round potential.  There was one stat that correlated to combine numbers that I thought was very interesting…No elite edge rusher has emerged from any round of the NFL Draft since at least 1999 with a short shuttle slower than 4.42 seconds.  JPP was one of the worst at the combine out of the guys that have top 2 round talent or rankings.

I like the Buccaneers accumulation of picks over the last 5 months.  I think they have done a good job recognizing this draft as a deep one, and trying to obtain as many picks as possible to be able to move around the draft as they please.  I just hope they don’t get infatuated with collecting as many picks as possible, not draft Gerald McCoy at 3, trade down and target JPP.  Please don’t do this Mark, pretty please, my 2nd plea  of the day.

Much has been made over the last two days about the Bucs having 12 picks in the 2011 draft.  The Bucs have the 3rd, 35th, 42nd, 67th,  101st, 153rd, 172nd and 5 final 7th round draft picks.  I don’t really think the all 12 picks will be used, moreso I think that the Bucs will use some of those extra picks in round 7, to move up and snag some guys as their board starts to wane at certain positions.  I have a plea for General Manager Mark Dominik and Radio Morris…PLEASE DON’T F THIS UP.

There has never been a more important draft for the Buccaneers franchise in my estimation.  We looked undercoached and undermanned last year at many positions and going into one of the deepest drafts in recent memory, this is a good time for the Bucs to turn those fortunes around. There needs to be clear targets by the front office at certain positions (CB, S, DT, DE, T, RB, WR) and those targets need to be aggressively pursued starting tomorrow night.

I will reserve judgement on this ridiculously inactive offseason until I see this weekends results.  Please, pretty please, do this right.

“We’ve done a lot of things different not only in the last 12 months but maybe even in the last couple months in terms of how we look at the draft and the way we do things, the way we break players down,” said Dominik. “With everything being digital now, we’re able to do so much more and look at players in so many different capacities. We’re taking advantage of that, and we’re asking our coaching staff to get involved as much as they can in this draft as well as all of our scouts.

“That’s another element of why we pushed OTAs back, to make sure that all of our coaches and everybody is really focused on this draft,” said Dominik. “We’re just putting a stronger emphasis on this draft.”

“It was the thought process of how we are building this team,” said Dominik. “It was sitting down with Coach Morris and saying, ‘This draft class is that important. Let’s make sure they’re involved in every OTA day. Let’s not let them miss out on five or six days prior to the draft. Let’s make sure this whole team is moving forward together.’ That was really important to us. We pushed all of our OTAs back behind the draft to make sure that everyone of those draft picks could be here. Let’s get as close to the 80-man limit here from Day One of the OTAs all the way through mini-camp. That’s every important to us.”

“A lot of the thought and emphasis was put in the last 12 months in terms of acquiring draft choices, because of what we want to do with this football team moving forward,” said Dominik. “That’s where our focus has been, our main focus. We’re going to put a lot of time and a lot of effort into the 2010 draft because it is such an important class and because we do have a lot of selections and a lot of high selections.”

What they do with this draft, and what they do in free agency will determine my 2k investment with the Bucs.