Tampa Bay Buccaneers: 3 players to target in the third round

Jachai Polite, EDGE, Florida

While Ferguson’s pre-draft process was a rough one, nobody had a worse couple of months than pass rusher out of Florida Jachai Polite. Before the combine Polite looked like a top-15 pick and a first round lock, now he may be lucky to hear his name called in the first two days of the draft.

Polite did not have anything positive to spin out of the combine. He interviewed poorly, publicly stated he did not like how teams picked apart his game, and then pulled up with a suspect injury after a 40 yard dash time which was slower than anyone imagined. At that point, Polite was hanging on by a thread to still possibly be a first round pick.

Any hope of hearing his name called on Thursday night this week went out the window after his pro day, where somehow he piled onto a bad combine with an even worse showing at his pro day. Showing up overweight, Polite ran a 5.03 second 40 yard dash, hit only 14 reps on the bench press, jumped only 8 feet on his broad jump, and ran a terrible 7.59 second 3-cone drill.

Polite’s saving grace is going to be his film, which remains one of the best in the class. However his pre-draft meeting schedule was full as teams wanted to meet with him to see what in the world caused him to prepare so poorly for the biggest job interviews of his life. If these team meetings went well, he could still manage to be a day-two pick.