The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are entering a crucial draft with plenty of team needs to be addressed.
Perhaps nobody merges Bucs coverage with draft coverage like Trevor Sikkema, who covered the Buccaneers for Pewter Report before venturing off and becoming one of the best draft analysts in the business.
Sikkema, along with Connor Rogers, host the NFL Stock Exchange Podcast, and their annual NFL Mock Draft charity special — a full 7-round mock with picks for every team, premiered Tuesday. The Buccaneers left the 7-round mock draft with quite the haul.
NFL Stock Exchange mock draft is best case scenario for Buccaneers
The mock draft started out with a bang, as LSU cornerback Mansoor Delane was somehow still on the board at 15th overall. The Bucs have been increasingly linked to the cornerback spot in the first round, and landing Delane is an absolute steal.
He allowed just a 31.3 passer rating when targeted last season. To put that in perspective, opposing quarterbacks would be better off spiking the ball in the dirt than targeting Delane.
Day 2 was used to address team needs after selecting the best player available in the first round. In the second round, Tampa Bay added Oklahoma edge rusher R Mason Thomas. He’s a disruptive force off the edge that totaled 17 sacks during his college career.
In the third round, the Bucs finally addressed the linebacker position with Missouri’s Josiah Trotter. He’s a physical downhill linebacker who is special in run defense, but he has a long way to go in pass coverage. It’s fair to question if he’s a true fit for what the Bucs need right now, or if they’d be better off targeting a better coverage linebacker such as Jacob Rodriguez or Kyle Louis.
Still, Trotter would undoubtedly be an improvement to the linebacker depth as it stands now.
The rest of NFL Stock Exchange Bucs Mock Draft
Round 4. Pick 116: JC Davis, OT, Illinois
Round 5, Pick 155: Kaleb Elarms-Orr LB, TCU
Round 6, Pick 195: Riley Nowakowski, TE, Indiana
Round 7, Pick 229: John Michael Gyllenborg, TE, Wyoming
The only real gripe is the lack of a defensive tackle, a position the Bucs are virtually guaranteed to draft. Drafting two tight ends is also somewhat redundant after re-signing Cade Otton and Ko Kieft.
The Bucs leave this mock draft exercise as a much better team than they entered it, getting one of the biggest steals in the first round in Mansoor Delane and addressing key needs at inside linebacker and pass rusher.
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