April 26 Updates
Graham Barton is graduating from college football to the professional ranks, but he won't have to change jersey numbers.
Following his introductory press conference on Friday afternoon, Barton posed for photos with General Manager Jason Licht and Head Coach Todd Bowles, holding a red Buccaneers jersey with his name on it in front of him. The jersey number: 62, same as what he wore for four seasons with the Duke Blue Devils. The Buccaneers selected Barton with the 26th overall pick in the draft on Thursday night.
Fortunately, that number was readily available, as no player has worn it for Tampa Bay since the 2020 season. Veteran center A.Q. Shipley wore the Bucs' 62 jersey for five games that season before landing on injured reserve, and another veteran lineman, Ted Larsen, adopted it later in the season, though he did not see any game action.
The most prominent Buccaneers to wear the 62 jersey in franchise history are guards Sean Farrell and Ian Beckles. A first-round draft pick in 1982, Farrell played five seasons in Tampa, starting 59 of the 64 games in which he played. Beckles took the number 62 after he was selected in the fifth round in 1990 and went on to start 97 of 101 games in which he played over seven seasons with the Buccaneers.
The number 62 has only been worn by offensive linemen in Bucs history. Other notable names on that list include Jeff Christy and Evan Smith.
Barton had no prior affinity for the number 62 when he arrived at Duke as a freshman, but the options presented to him were very limited.
"Obviously, [I get to] stay consisent with numbers, for me at least. To be honest with you, there's no rhyme or reason I had 62. At Duke, it was either 62 or 69, so I took 62, and just stuck with it for four years."
CLICK HERE for more on the Bucs' first-round selection of Graham Barton.
April 24 Updates
One day before the start of the 2024 NFL Draft, in which the Buccaneers hope to add several key contributors, the offseason roster has actually reduced one. On Wednesday, the Bucs waived second-year cornerback Richard LeCounte, who had spent the last eight months with the team.
LeCounte signed with the Buccaneers during the 2023 preseason and ended up on the practice squad to start the regular season. He remained on that unit throughout the season, including the playoffs, but was elevated on game day the maximum number of three times. LeCounte saw action in two of those three games, seeing a handful of snaps on special teams.
LeCounte first entered the NFL as a fifth-round draft pick by the Browns in 2021. He played in 10 games with one start over two seasons in Cleveland, recording three tackles. He played his college ball at Georgia, appearing in 41 games over four seasons and amassing 176 tackles, 6.5 tackles for loss, eight interceptions, 10 passes defensed, four forced fumbles and six fumble recoveries.
CLICK HERE to review the Buccaneers' offseason roster moves prior to the draft.
April 15 Updates
The 2024 NFL Draft is less than two weeks away, and the Buccaneers are preparing to kick off their own efforts with the 26th pick in the first round. General Manager Jason Licht and his crew have multiple strategies in place depending upon how the picks fall in front of the Buccaneers, but it's impossible to truly know at this point which of the team's most coveted prospects will make it to their spot.
Of course, there's just as much uncertainty on the other side of the process. USC quarterback Caleb Williams can probably start looking for a place to live in the Chicago area, but most of the other top-rated prospects are still days away from finding out where their first NFL destination will be. And even though some parts of the process might seem to offer clues as to which teams are interested, that can also be misleading.
The Buccaneers, for instance, did not use one of their alloted "Top 30" pre-draft visits on defensive lineman Calijah Kancey before selecting the Pitt star with the 19th overall pick last year. In fact, not a single NFL team called Kancey in for a Top 30 visit, which left him even more confused about where he stood in the eyes of NFL talent evaluators.
"I didn't have a feeling at all," said Kancey. "I met with the Bucs at the Combine, but other than that I never talked to them. I honestly didn't know. I asked my agent, 'Why does nobody want to call me in for a '30' visit? Like, what's going on?' I was really stressed out. It was hard. 'Man, am I even going in the first round still?' You never know. Everybody tells you the same thing but you just don't know. It's very hard."
Kancey will have some new teammates soon, starting with the 26th pick in the draft, barring any trades. Of course, he currently has no idea who that will be, and whoever the Bucs pick may currently have no idea he is on the team's short list.
"The draft process is very stressful but it's very fun," said Kancey, who admits he's enjoying this offseason a lot more than the last one. "The experience is fun. Just waiting for your name to be called, and talking to 32 teams, and not knowing who actually likes you, and finding out who actually loves you is very special. At [pick] 26, I don't know who we'll get, but that process is very stressful. You've just got to embrace it."
The multitude of mock drafts wouldn't have helped Kancey very much a year ago, as the analysts never really put him and the Bucs together before the actual picks were made. He would advise this year's draft prospects to ignore that particular part of the process and focus on being ready for whatever team eventually makes the phone call on draft night.
"I didn't even pay attention to that," said Kancey of mock draft season. "I would see stuff on Twitter here and there but I didn't go out and look for it because I didn't want my mind to be all over the place. My main thing was just training and being ready for that day."
April 12 Updates
Jason Licht's largely successful run of picking offensive linemen on Day Two of the draft has one collective throughline. From Ali Marpet to Alex Cappa to Robert Hainsey to Luke Goedeke to Cody Mauch, all of those second and third-round picks played tackle in college but were viewed as interior linemen during the draft process.
Marpet eventually played all three interior spots during his career and eventually landed in the Pro Bowl as a left guard. Alex Cappa settled in at right guard and played well enough to get a lucrative deal from the Bengals in free agency. Hainsey solidified the Bucs' center position the past two years after a knee injury pushed Pro Bowler Ryan Jensen to eventual retirement. Goedeke actually moved back to his college spot of right tackle in his second season and performed well, though Licht mentioned that the door isn't completely closed on him playing guard again at some point. Mauch was a Day One starter at right guard as a rookie last year and had a promising debut season.
(There's also a lot of small school success in that group, but Hainsey played at Notre Dame so that's a little bit less connective tissue.)
That things have mostly gone according to plan with all of those converted linemen is impressive, and perhaps a bit against the odds.
"I learned long ago that it's not as easy as people think," said Licht. "Some people think, 'Just move a guy inside and it'll work out.' The guy, first of all, has to be tough. He has to be able to have a lot of reactive athleticism because bullets are flying a lot quicker inside. You have people coming at you from different directions, as opposed to just coming off the edge."
As noted, all of those players were second or third-round picks, but it's possible the Bucs could try their hand at another O-Line position switch in the first round this season. Licht confirmed that the Bucs have needs in "both trenches" in his pre-draft press conference on Thursday, and indeed there is an open spot at left guard after Aaron Stinnie left for the Giants in free agency. For that reason, interior offensive line is a common pairing for the Bucs in mock drafts, and specifically a prospect often mocked to the team at pick number 26 is Duke's Graham Barton.
Barton played a little bit of center as a freshman out of necessity but then settled in at left tackle for the Blue Devils for the past three seasons. NFL scouts project him as a guard or center, however, and he has been compared to versatile Jets lineman Alijah Vera-Tucker. Other college tackes who could possibly move inside and are likely Day One or Two picks include Washington's Troy Fautanu, Arizona's Jordan Morgan and Kansas' Dominick Puni.
College tackles who are immediately moved inside by NFL teams usually have some physical trait that teams believe translate better to guard than tackle, such as shorter arms. But there's a lot more that goes into the scouting report when considering such a switch.
"You have to be instinctive, smart, tough," said Licht. "You have to be able to bend, you have to be able to anchor, you have to have some stoutness, you have to be able to play with your cleats in the ground. There's a lot of things that go into it."
CLICK HERE to watch Licht's entire pre-draft press conference.
April 1 Updates
For the first time in team history, the Buccaneers are three-time defending division champions, having now topped the NFC South in 2021, 2022 and 2023. The oddsmakers don't expect them to make it four in a row.
The Atlanta Falcons haven't won more than seven games in a season since 2017 and have a new head coach in 2024 in Raheem Morris. While that brief description wouldn't seem like the pedigree of a division favorite, the Falcons made one dramatic move earlier this offseason that has made the oddsmakers quite bullish on their fortunes. They signed quarterback Kirk Cousins.
It's early, obviously, but the Falcons are currently the betting favorites to win the NFC South, with the Bucs a somewhat distant second. Early win total projections have the Buccaneers at 8.5, which nearly matches their nine wins of 2023. The Falcons, however, are projected to win 10.5 games.
Of course, the Bucs are familiar with this situation. After winning the South with an 8-9 record in 2022 and watching Tom Brady ease into retirement, the Bucs were slapped with a projected win total of around six for 2023. The Bucs are also perfectly fine with this national perception.
"That's fine with me," said General Manager Jason Licht. "I like being the underdog. This team likes being the underdog. And I like keeping receipts."
The Bucs' nine wins in 2023 may have been the lowest total among the eight division winners, but the team surged to a 5-1 finish in the regular season then blasted Philadelphia in the Wild Card round before taking Detroit to the brink in the Divisional round. At this time a year ago, the Bucs thought they might have a suitable replacement for Brady but couldn't be completely sure. After Baker Mayfield's outstanding performance in his first season in Tampa, the Buccaneers have reason to feel more confident about their chances than they did last spring.
"To be honest, I feel a lot better than I did last offseason, knowing what this team is capable of," said Licht. "We were getting better and better as we went along during the season. It's not like we're just staying status quo. I think the players we have are going to get better, the team's going to be better and we're going to add some more youth during the draft, so I'm really, really excited."
Barring some major addition to the roster or an untimely injury, the Bucs' outside projections for the 2024 season are not likely to change much between now and the start of the season. And the Bucs will happily carry the role of underdog all the way up until it's time prove on the field whether they will capture a fourth straight division crown or not.
"It's no different," said Todd Bowles. "You talk about respect – Aretha Franklin's probably the only one that gets that. Everybody else, you kind of just go with the flow. We're not trying to win the offseason, we're trying to win the season. So our focus will be the same. It fuels a lot of us. It fuels the players. We get ready to come back and defend our title, like we did (in 2023), just go further in the playoffs. That's all we worry about at this time of the year."
CLICK HERE to listen to Todd Bowles' lengthy meeting with the media during the NFL Annual Meeting.
