Photos of quarterback Jameis Winston from his rookie season.
The Buccaneers have a quarterback set to begin his second season after a record-breaking rookie year, a wide receiver who's recorded back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons in his first two years in the league and the NFL's second-leading rusher returning for five more seasons after signing a new contract earlier this month.
That being said, it shouldn't come as surprise that the Buccaneers are one of the youngest teams in the league. In 2015, the average age for a player on the team was 25.91, which made the Bucs the No. 11 youngest team in the league. But those numbers only tell a part of the story.
Chase Stewart of FootballPerspective.com realized that simply averaging the players' ages didn't provide a strong representation for the group that actually played the majority of the downs, nor did it take into account the age of players at key positions, like quarterback. So he decided to find the approximate value for each team based on a more precise criteria.
"Measuring team age in the NFL is tricky," he wrote. "You don't want to calculate the average age of a 53-man roster and call that the "team age" because the age of a team's starters is much more relevant than the age of a team's reserves. The average age of a team's starting lineup isn't perfect, either. The age of the quarterback and key offensive and defensive players should count for more than the age of a less relevant starter. Ideally, you want to calculate a team's average age by placing greater weight on the team's most relevant players."
His research concluded that, according to the adjusted approximate value, the Buccaneers' core was the third-youngest in the league at an average age of 26.1, trailing St. Louis and Jacksonville. Stewart also found that the Bucs' offense and defense were both the fifth-youngest in the league. For his full analysis, click **HERE**.
