Tampa Bay Buccaneers general manager Jason Licht absolutely smashed another draft class, landing arguably the biggest steal of 2026 in Rueben Bain Jr., who was probably the best overall player in college football last season yet fell all the way down to pick No. 15 and right into the hands of the most pass rush needy playoff contender in the NFL.
But Bain Jr. was not the only great pick up the Bucs made on the defensive side of the ball. Keionte Scott, his teammate in the defensive backfield for the Miami Hurricanes, was also an incredible player in college. And then the Bucs second round pick, inside linebacker Josiah Trotter, has all the tools to become the next iconic Bucs linebacker in the same year Lavonte David, a future Hall of Famer, called it lights out on his own career.
Trotter's father Jeremiah Trotter was an elite linebacker and a four time Pro Bowler for one of the Buccaneers great NFC playoff rivals, the Philadelphia Eagles, in the early part of the century. And while Josiah is backed to follow in his foot steps, he just got an even more flattering comparison to a bigger legend - a Buccaneers legend.
Josiah Trotter has the hype machine behind him
In an appearance on the Jay Recher podcast, via Joe Bucs Fan, one of Jeremiah Trotter's old Eagles teammates Ian Beckles, a former Tampa Bay Buccaneers guard on the offensive side of the ball, thinks that Josiah's game is actually more like Derrick Brooks.
Beckles said of the younger Trotter, “I’ve never seen this in a player where [Jeremiah Trotter] never made a tackle outside the tackles,” Beckles said. “If you run inside the tackles, he’s going to run straight and blow up two-thirds of whatever’s in there. And that was his job, and he did it for a long time and he did it effectively. That’s not Mike Singletary. That’s not Ray Lewis. That’s not Luke Kuechly. But he did what he was doing amazingly, and Philadelphia was good because they knew what his strengths were. Josiah’s a different bird. Josiah, I see more Derrick Brooks in him. I see sideline-to-sideline, reading plays and being more instinctive.”
Josiah Trotter isn't the first talent in this year's draft class to get compared to Derrick Brooks, as Kyle Louis was also generating those comps before the 2026 NFL Draft when the Buccaneers had him squarely on their radar.
The Bucs also were after Jacob Rodriguez, and some fans were disappointed to end up with Trotter. But the more former and current Buccaneers talk about Trotter, the more hype grows and the more Bucs fans are realizing they ended up with a great catch.
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