Remember the 2005 NFL Draft? It was the one most known for when Aaron Rodgers famously slid to the 24th pick when the Green Bay Packers nabbed him and enjoyed having him as their QB1 for many years. Meanwhile, the teams ahead of the Packers all had opportunities to take Rodgers and passed. This includes our very own Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The Bucs held the fifth overall pick in that year's draft and instead of selecting Rodgers, as then-head coach Jon Gruden said the team would do, they went with running back Cadillac Williams. After a sensational rookie season where Williams was crowned Offensive Rookie of the Year after rushing for 1,178 yards and six touchdowns, the rest of his career was downhill from there mostly due to various knee injuries.
Rodgers, on the other hand, didn't play much during the first three years of his career as he waited for Brett Favre to move on. In 2008, Rodgers finally got a chance to be the starter and proved he was the right pick for the Packers.
Jon Gruden wanted to draft Aaron Rodgers in 2005
The Bucs had two different starting quarterbacks during the 2005 season with Chris Simms starting 10 games and Brian Griese starting six. The quarterback play wasn't always stellar but it was enough to help lead the team to 11 wins and earn a spot in the playoffs.
That year might not have called for Rodgers to be taking snaps for the offense but the next year certainly would have. The Bucs won just four games in 2006 and having to start three different signal-callers was a strong reason why. Rodgers might have struggled a bit initially but at least he'd have hopefully become the player we all have watched him grow into and that'd have led to fewer losing seasons, which unfortunately was not the case for Tampa.
As Rodgers rose to fame in Green Bay, the Buccaneers continued to barely scrape by and fade further into irrelevancy. They missed the playoffs for 11 straight years and during those 11 years, Rodgers (the first of which was his first full year as a starter) missed the postseason only four times and won a Super Bowl just three years into being a starter.
This Gruden story isn't exactly brand new information for Bucs fans but it never gets any easier hearing that one of the most electric quarterbacks to ever play the game could have been throwing touchdowns regularly in Tampa.
Fortunately, things have turned out for the best and the Bucs even have a more recent Super Bowl win than the former first-round quarterback. The funnier part is that they had to beat him to get that championship so the story truly did come full circle.