Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Saquon Barkley may be the guy

With the draft rapidly approaching, do the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have their sites set on Penn State running back Saquon Barkley?

There’s talk about Quenton Nelson. There’s talk about Bradley Chubb. There’s talk about Derwin James, Minkah Fitzpatrick, Denzel Ward. When all the smoke clears and the pick is made, are the Tampa Bay Buccaneers laser focused on Penn State running back Saquon Barkley?

It’s starting to appear that way.

Benjamin Allbright has tweeted quite a bit recently about how Barkely won’t make it past the Buccaneers at number seven. Say what you will about Allbright – he’s opinionated, sometimes difficult – but he never tweets out anything without the facts or knowledge to back it up. If he’s hearing this much about Barkley and the Bucs, it’s hard not to buy in.

Again, it seems as if Allbright is connecting Barkley to the Buccaneers every time he’s asked and as you can see in the last tweet, he’s heard that executives around the league actually believe he will drop to the Bucs at seven.

However, if that is the case, would the Tampa Bay Buccaneers be in a position where they’d have to choose between Barkely and Nelson or Chubb?

Although it seems unlikely that two of the top three non-quarterbacks fall to seven, crazier things have happened. The Colts could go for Georgia’s Roquan Smith as they transition their defense.

We could see five quarterbacks go before the Bucs’ pick, allowing two of these players to fall to Tampa.

So what would they do?

All signs are pointing to Barkley. Many believe he is the best player in years at the running back position and running back is arguably the Buccaneers’ biggest position of need. With the recent success of Leonard Fournette and Ezekiel Elliott being top ten picks and transforming their teams’ offenses, the Bucs may be enticed to pull the trigger at seven.

They addressed defensive line and pass rush, so they could look for a more developmental guy on day three. Koetter said Ali Marpet is moving to left guard, which is Quenton Nelson’s position so they likely believe they could miss on Nelson and be fine. From there, the Buccaneers are not choosing from the top secondary prospects over Barkley.

Related Story: Buccaneers Draft Profile: Saquon Barkley

The speculation will soon end. We are less than two weeks away from the draft an all our questions will be answered. As someone who would rather draft a running back in the second round and take Nelson or Chubb (if available) with number seven, I’m beginning to believe Barkley is going to be the guy for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.