Tampa Bay Buccaneers rationale for draft pick is atrocious
By John Paul
The Buccaneers generally have a good plan when they’re in the draft room, but special teams appear to be Jason Licht’s Kryptonite.
Each year, the NFL draft leaves fans of different teams feeling a wide spectrum of emotions. Some teams make all the right moves and leave the draft far better, while others make inexplicable decisions that will hinder their team’s success for years to come.
Between both those extremes are the teams in the middle like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in this year’s draft, a team that made decisions with varying levels of obvious success.
While they had some intelligent picks, the Bucs had one pick that certainly left fans scratching their heads. This shock was due to the fact that they chose to draft a punter, Jake Camarada, a decision that isn’t incredibly shocking on its face.
However, what is shocking is the fact that the team decided to use a 4th round pick to draft him.
Considering punters are a dime a dozen and easy to acquire later in the draft as well as in free agency, Buccaneers fans were left with questions after the pick.
Unfortunately, Bucs special teams coordinator Keith Armstrong had some less than stellar reasoning for using the valuable pick on Camarada.
Armstrong explained that the reasoning for his pick was, “the intangibles.” Now, typically this would imply that Camarada has shown some kind of exceptional talent elsewhere.
Armstrong went on to say that these “intangibles” were the fact that Camrada also played high level baseball and ran an impressive 40 time.
These are objectively poor metrics to be used as rationale for drafting a punter. With all due respect to Armstrong, the fact that Camarada can run fast and catch a football while playing a position that only requires him to walk on the field, kick a ball, and then walk off is absurd.
The Buccaneers special teams, kickers especially outside of two good years, have struggled to consistently produce over the last few seasons. With draft decisions like this, it’s not some great mystery as to why.
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