Buccaneers get heir-apparent in Bucky Brooks’ first official mock draft
Bucky Brooks’ first official mock draft has the Tampa Bay Buccaneers taking an heir-apparent at an important position, but not the one Buccaneers fans may be expecting.
With only four teams remaining in the 2022 NFL season, we are knee-deep in #MockDraftSzn for the majority of the NFL, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers included. While you can find seemingly an infinite amount of mock drafts from sea to shining sea, the ones featured on NFL.com will often times be held in higher regard. Some featured on the site are taken with less grains of salt than others, and this is one Buccaneers fans may want to look at.
Daniel Jeremiah and Bucky Brooks are two of the head honchos around those parts this time of year, and we took a look at what Jeremiah had in store for the Bucs a little while back.
Related Story. Daniel Jeremiah’s Bucs pick. light
Now, it’s time to see what Brooks thinks the Buccaneers will do with their 19th overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft.
Brooks is of the belief that the Bucs will select Drew Sanders, a hard-hitting junior linebacker from the University of Arkansas in the first round. It may come as a surprise to some on the surface, but makes a lot of sense when you take a bit of a deeper dive.
Everyone expects the Buccaneers to be without Tom Brady going forward, in what is an end of an era. As a result, the Bucs will need to find the next man up to fill his void. However, there is also a strong chance Lavonte David will be moving on, bringing an even longer ere to an end. This is where Sanders would come in.
Sanders would fill the obvious hole as a starting linebacker in the middle alongside Devin White, but Sanders also has pass-rush ability, which is an area the Buccaneers really struggled in 2022, especially when Shag Barrett went down with an injury. Sanders would kill two birds with one stone.
We obviously have a long way to go until draft time, and A TON can (and probably will) change between now and then for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. To fill that time though, we might as well get a preview of what we might be looking at moving forward.