The Buccaneers, as we all know by now, traded up into the second round to draft Roberto Aguayo, the kicker from Florida State. Jason Licht defended that pick yet again in a recent interview.
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Jason Licht has been GM of the Buccaneers for three years now and one of the biggest problems he’s witnessed in that time has been special teams. More specifically, kicking. Scott Reynolds of PewterReport.com does fantastic work and has a “Fab 5” feature every Friday. He had the opportunity to speak with Licht recently and, of course, Aguayo came up.
Yes, the Bucs have received plenty of national criticism for trading up to draft a kicker in the second round. However, some national members – such as FOX Sports radio personality Colin Cowherd and NFL Network analyst Daniel Jeremiah – understand and like the pick for the Bucs. Licht went into some detail with Reynolds on their evaluation and thought process that led to the highest drafted kicker since Sebastian Janikowski in 2000;
"Obviously, it’s harder to kick in college because of the wider hashes. His percentage the last two years – he was 100 percent on field goals if they were kicked from within NFL hashes. Roberto is wired differently. He’s very confident.The folks at Florida State said, ‘He’s one of the leaders on our team.’ You just don’t run across that often at all with kickers. Just the way he carries himself, he’s different. He’s more of a normal teammate as a kicker. He’s a core player and a leader. He has a certain confidence about him. You just like being around him.”"
After getting over the initial shock of the pick, I accepted it and understood it made this team better. Yes, I thought the Bucs were trading up for Vonn Bell, but the fact that they passed on him – allowing him to go to division rival New Orleans two picks later – doesn’t change the fact that Aguayo is, well, a game changer.
Think about the new touchback rule for a minute. A team can kneel the ball and get it at the 25-yard line. Aguayo prevents that from happening. No, it won’t happen every time, but Aguayo possesses the ability to kick these mile high, rainbow kicks with more hang time than Michael Jordan in slow motion. Kicking off like that and keeping the ball out of the endzone is a huge boost for the Bucs. That gives them time to get down the field and pin the opposition deep in their own territory rather than booting the ball out of the endzone for a touchback. Teams used to want to avoid the change of big play returns by kicking that way, now Aguayo is responsible for making sure teams do return it.
Another interesting story was one Licht told about how he came to understand the importance of kicking in this game. While he was in New England working for Bill Belichick, he and his colleagues were given a very interesting task;
"“In New England, Bill Belichick made us scouts list our roster from 1-53 and we had eight practice squad guys and we had some guys on I.R., but he wanted us to rank our guys from first to last. None of us had the kicker, Stephen Gostkowski, in our top 10 – even though he was an excellent kicker. After we were done, Bill said, ‘Nobody wants to put Gostkowski in our top 10? Why, just because he’s a kicker?’ Bill made us “rethink that” and he got his point across. He said, ‘You tell me 10 other players that are more important than him!’It was an eye-opening moment for me. I had been around Adam Vinatieri and Gostkowski and those are two of the best. I know how good of a feeling that is to have a guy like that when you know that a lot of the games are going to come down to field goals – a lot of the games come down to the kicker.”"
Many Bucs fans are coming around on Roberto Aguayo and beginning to understand the importance and impact he will have in 2016 and beyond. National media will likely never catch up, until Aguayo proves them all wrong. This is back to back years Licht will have netted four starters in the draft, including the franchise kicker.
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What do you think about Aguayo? If you didn’t like the pick before, are you starting to come around? Do you buy into Licht’s philosophies on building a team here in Tampa Bay? Sound off in the comments!