2014 Record: 2-14

Current +/- wins per Bovada: 5.5

Overall: The first year of the Jason Licht/Lovie Smith era in Tampa Bay resulted in a disappointing 2-14 record, earning the No. 1 overall draft pick as the worst team in the NFL. Granted, Licht at GM and Smith at Head Coach were handed the keys to a car which had already crashed and burned under the clueless, hopeless Greg Schiano. Still, a host of close losses with some blowout drubbings interspersed was a real downer for a team which harbored expectations of a quick turnaround.

Year Two brings Jameis Winston as that top draft pick, bringing hope he can be the franchise quarterback to lead this team to perennial contention. His big smile and sky-high potential are much-needed infusions of vitality for a team which has lacked a national identity for too long. With rising star Mike Evans at wideout and outstanding talents in Gerald McCoy and Lavonte David anchoring the defense, the Bucs do have All-Pro caliber talent in key positions to build around. Most of the offensive line is solid, and the CBs and LBs are good enough to win with.

The issue is the role players. Much of the roster outside the frontline stars is playing one or two spots higher on the depth chart than they belong, notably in the secondary and defensive line. There is almost no depth at any position, which negatively impacts special teams as well. Smith’s unimaginative coaching doesn’t inspire, either. Tampa Bay will need career years from several players if it is to turn that losing record around so quickly.

Five Questions

1. Can anyone besides Gerald McCoy rush the passer?

Defensive tackle Gerald McCoy is one of the five most talented players in the NFL today regardless of position. When you consider just how productive he is given how little help he has around him, it’s downright amazing he bagged 8.5 sacks in 13 games last year.

Unfortunately, McCoy is a one-man gang as a pass rusher far too often. Even worse, free agent bust Michael Johnson scampered back to Cincinnati after underwhelming with just four sacks. End Jacquies Smith finished second to McCoy with 6.5 sacks, while tackle Clinton McDonald posted five. Neither of those totals is enough to compensate for the inadequate run support those two provide, but there were no better options.

I like the George Johnson signing. The free-agent from Detroit reinvented himself as a lither edge rusher and cashed in after a strong season for the Lions. He might be a one-year wonder coming from a loaded defense, but he might also be a solid strong-side DE for the next few years. His first step and grab/yank moves produced six sacks and 27 QB pressures in about 500 snaps, which is pretty solid. Playing off McCoy, he can post those numbers again. Maybe.

Nobody else on the defense is a real threat. Smith returns, likely backing up Johnson. His productivity was a surprise after he was cut by three AFC East teams in two years, but he had a lot of plays where he reminded everyone why those squads gave up on him. It’s okay to be optimistic he can handle being the third DE capably and perhaps top five sacks again. It’s not okay to expect any more.

William Gholston mans the other DE spot for his run defense, not his pass rush. He has just five sacks in his two seasons as an erstwhile starter. Because Lovie Smith likes to blitz about as much as housecats like to swim, they get no real help from the linebackers or secondary. Maybe new DT Henry Melton can help, though he’s more of a depth signing with injury issues. Keep an eye on UDFA Ryan Delaire, who terrorized the edge at Towson but probably needs a year on the practice squad before he can contribute much. 

2. How quickly does Jameis Winston establish himself?

I strongly support the decision to select Jameis Winston No. 1 overall. The former Seminole has all the physical tools to be a perennial All-Pro at the most important position in professional sports. The size, arm strength, touch on the ball are all top notch.

Of course there are the maturity issues. They’re real and they are a legit concern. How well he handles being a professional with so much responsibility remains to be seen, a truly unpredictable factor which holds the key to the Buccaneers future over the next decade.

If focusing on just the tangible, Winston could be quite impressive right away. Look back at his 2013 national championship and Heisman season. He strapped a talented core group to his back and confidently led them to glory with very few on-field missteps. The field vision, the ability to manipulate the defense with his eyes and shoulders, the quick information processing, the strength and agility to extend plays with his legs while keeping his head up, all fantastic. He regressed in 2014 with an overrated OL and a major dropoff in receiving talent around him. Winston looked like a guy trying to do too much, forcing unnecessary throws and making poor decisions in general.

Lowered expectations should help Jameis, who strangely has already earned one-name moniker status. Nobody should be expecting these Buccaneers to sniff the playoffs this year, and hopefully the coaching staff doesn’t demand their precocious new leader even try. 2015 is all about bringing him along at pace. NFL defensive coordinators are going to pore over all those INTs last fall and quickly ascertain how to scheme against Jameis. He’s got a big learning curve. Even the best rookie QBs struggle with interceptions and with the complexity of NFL defenses. This will not be an exception.

The key is weekly progress. Winston should be a better, more confident and more efficient player in Week 17 than he is in Week 5. Watch how well he handles the lumps, the pick-sixes or the three straight 3-and-outs to start a third quarter already down 21-6. They’re coming. The best thing for Winston just might be a relatively anonymous rookie year, where he quietly throws 20 TDs to 16 INTs and raises his completion percentage from 54 in September to 64 in December for a 5-11 team. No immediate success or failure to attract the national spotlight. I’d take that over Jameis being Offensive Rookie of the Year and surprisingly leading this team to 8-8 and second place in the NFC South, an outcome which could inflate his sizeable ego and lead to a similar regression as we saw at FSU. Be patient, Bucs fans.

3. Will Jameis get much help?

Every young quarterback needs a strong support system. If you look at why some pretty talented, highly drafted QBs fail, the lack of dynamic help around him is typically a common denominator.

Tampa Bay has some good pieces in places around Winston. It starts up front, where the interior of the offensive line is quality. Logan Mankins at left guard, Evan Smith (formerly Dietrich-Smith) at center and rookie Ali Marpet at right guard is a very solid interior combination. I love the concept of grizzled veteran Mankins mentoring young Marpet, a D-III phenom who shined during Senior Bowl practices, and getting him ready for the huge jump from Hobart to the NFL. I expect some bumps in the road but feel strongly Marpet will be very good in time. Smith, like Mankins from New England, has played for a Super Bowl team (Green Bay) and is one of the craftiest guys at his position. Right tackle is in good shape with Demar Dotson, a 6’8” former basketball player with great feet for his size. He’s a pass blocking specialist, which makes installing him on the right side a little curious.

Winston has some desirable passing targets too. Mike Evans burst onto the NFL as a rookie, proving this draft analyst woefully incorrect in stating he needed time to develop his routes and work on more traditional passing plays. He’s still got work to do in both those areas, but he improved so quickly at using his size to his advantage earlier in routes from his days at Texas A&M, where almost all of his productivity came on broken plays and desperate Johnny Football heaves. His 12 TDs led all rookies, and his 15.5 YPC are an excellent figure that could actually go up if Winston is accurate with his deeper throws. He should remind the rookie QB of his old Florida State teammate Kelvin Benjamin, only with more reliable hands and better giddyup on deeper routes.

Veteran Vincent Jackson resides on the other side, and he’s also a huge target with reliable hands and a massive catch radius. His numbers took a sizeable hit, notably in yards per catch and TDs, with the shaky QB play last year, but the 32-year-old can still play. Second-year tight end Austin Seferian-Jenkins offers yet another long target, and he should improve with good health and a year under his belt. The sheer height of those three wideouts will make it easier for Winston to find targets when he’s pressured or extending plays outside the pocket. Being able to trust them to win contested throws is invaluable, too.

Therein lies the complete list of reliable assets at Winston’s disposal.

Running back is a jumbled mess of mediocre talents like Bobby Rainey, Charles Sims and Doug Martin, who showed great promise early but has been greatly diminished by a litany of injury woes. Martin does hold promise, as reports are he’s in great shape and lost some weight to augment his quickness. If he can get back to the rookie dynamo he once was and stay healthy, Martin ameliorates much of the concern at RB. It’s easy to forget he rushed for almost 1500 yards and caught 49 passes in 2012. I just can’t trust he’ll be that guy again until I see, though my fingers are definitely crossed. They desperately need him; Rainey had one great game but was awful the rest of the year, too jumpy as a runner and simply dreadful in pass protection. I do like rugged, versatile Jovorskie Lane at fullback, though he has a training camp battle with 7th rounder Joey Iosefa on his hands.

Finding a third receiver and second TE on the roster is a real challenge. With two giants outside, it should be self-evident for the Bucs to find a quicker-than-fast, waterbug-type to man the slot. Robert Herron fits the type but wasn’t NFL-ready as a rookie out of Wyoming. He caught just six passes and struggled with the increased size and physicality of the pros. Russell Shepard and Tavarres King both did little in their auditions inside. Louis Murphy, a straight-line outside receiver, was the primary third wideout. He’s okay as the third outside option but lost in the slot. There is hope with rookie Kenny Bell from Nebraska, though he too is better-suited outside. Bell is a solid jack-of-all, master-of-no trades kind of wideout with one notable exception--he’s a fantastic blocker. Fellow rookie wideout Kaelin Clay shouldn’t ever be used as anything but a return man, where he could be very, very electric.

The Bucs are hopeful someone emerges from a camp battle for the second TE spot among Brandon Myers, Luke Stocker and Tim Wright, who returns to Tampa after being dealt away for Mankins once upon a time. Wright is a hybrid WR/TE who has flashed real ability at times. Myers and Stocker caught a combined 43 passes for 230 yards and no TDs last year, not exactly impressive. Factor in that both are below-average blockers and there is a real hole here.

The biggest hole, however, is left tackle. It shouldn’t be, as Dotson or even swing tackle Kevin Pamphile (decent as a rookie) would be acceptable solutions there. But the Bucs coaches seem hell-bent on forcing rookie Donovan Smith into the job. This is, to quote Gob Bluth, a HUGE mistake. Here’s what noted OL guru and evaluator Lance Zierlein had to say about Smith pre-draft:

“The frame of a guard and the skill set of a guard probably means Smith will end up moving to guard. His hands need work, but with power as his calling card and the ability to hide some of his athletic deficiencies by moving him inside, he has a good shot of getting drafted and fighting for a backup spot.”

That’s kinder than my evaluation after watching him in person surrender 9 QB pressures to Michigan’s backup rush end. That’s not an exaggeration. The Bucs took Smith in the second round largely on the basis of him playing fairly well in Senior Bowl practices. I was there too, and most of his quality work came against guys like Henry Anderson or ZaDarius Smith, guys who don’t win with speed or quickness. He’ll be dominated, and I don’t use that word lightly, in pass protection against the faster edge rushers in the NFL.

4. Where did the defense get better?

The Buccaneers had defensive issues beyond the middling pass rush. Some of their areas for improvement…

 

No.

NFL Rank

QB Rating Allowed

97.2

27th

Yards per Pass Attempt

7.2

25th

Third Down Conversions

43.7

27th

Points per Game

25.6

25th

Much of the issues stemmed from the secondary, where there has been no change at corner but upheaval at safety. Cornerback Alterraun Verner was definitely not the problem. He was quite good in his first season after coming over from Tennessee, showing stickiness in coverage, a great understanding of the opposing offensive scheme and the ability to adjust in-game. Verner isn’t a shutdown corner. In fact, he allowed over 70% of targets in his direction to be completed. Where he really excels is in quickly snuffing out the receiver with strong tackling right after the catch. What impressed me most about Verner is that he struggled early on but steadily improved as the year bore on despite the lost season.

Johnthan Banks and Leonard Johnson man the other corner spots. Both youngsters have taken their share of lumps. Banks gets picked on a lot as opponents have avoided Darrelle Revis and now Verner on the other side. His ball skills keep him in the starting lineup, though his lack of both speed and strength limit Banks. The latter is a real issue in tackling. Johnson is okay in the slot when matched up against smaller guys, but when bigger receivers enter his zone he is overmatched. The Bucs could be better here, but this trio is functional.

The safeties? Not so much. The much ballyhooed combo of Mark Barron and Dashon Goldson failed miserably. Barron was a first-round pick who badly flopped. He didn’t even make it through his third season before the Bucs gave up on his poor range in coverage and matador tackling. Goldson was a big-ticket free agent from San Francisco who was downright terrible in coverage. He had no clue what his role was far too often, failing to understand his help assignment or late to react to the action. He’s now part of the problem in Washington, while Barron clings to a backup role in St. Louis.

Bradley McDougald took over for Barron and in some ways represented progress. The waiver-wire acquisition from the Chiefs has good length and athleticism, and he isn’t shy about attacking the play. That clearly endears him to Coach Smith, who preaches takeaways to his DBs. Positional discipline is still a work in progress, but at least he’s got more awareness for a far lesser price tag than the departed.

The other safety spot is where the train really goes off the tracks. It will be either Chris Conte or Major Wright, likely Conte. That tandem formed one of the most laughably egregious safety duos in NFL history in Lovie’s last season in Chicago. Wright is stiff and uninstinctive. The fact he’s also lousy on special teams cover units makes it downright mystifying how he’s still in the league. Conte might be the slowest player to react to the play I’ve ever seen; there were numerous plays where the ball was completed well down the field and he was still backpedaling despite looking right at it. His Pro Football Focus grade is inflated by his complete incompetence; he’s so far away from where he needs to be that he doesn’t even register. To be fair to Conte, 2014 was his best season, albeit one where he missed portions of several games and the final three games outright with two separate concussions.

The Bucs took a flier on another horrendous flop of a recent draft pick in D.J. Swearinger, a second-round pick by the Texans in 2013 whose utter defiance of professionalism and discipline quickly wore thin in Houston. He’s got a lot of natural talent but no clue on the mental side of the game. It’s just as likely the Bucs quickly discard him after another boneheaded penalty or play where he goes rogue and disrupts the entire defense as it is that he gets his act together and becomes an unexpected savior at safety. He’s worth the low-risk look.

At least linebacker looks strong. Lavonte David is a worthy Pro Bowler who racks up copious amounts of tackles. In Smith’s system he’s asked to be more of a read/react player than instigator, and as a result he wasn’t nearly as dynamic of a player. That’s on the coaching, not him. Danny Lansanah was a pleasant find as a strongside backer after bouncing around practice squads for a few years. He can cover and he can hit, though he doesn’t always wrap well. Lansanah is perfectly suited for the job asked of him here. If speedy Bruce Carter can stay healthy, the Bucs have a very solid starting trio that might be the twitchiest in the league. I also like the fit for fourth-round rookie Kwon Alexander, who should be the fourth LB and provide some real depth.  If the line in front of them plays better, this could be a difference-making unit. Could being the key word there…

5. How long before Lovie Smith gets fired?

I hate to be so cold and negative towards a person I know to be a very good man, well-liked around the league by both players and peers and a coach who openly shoulders the flames thrown at his team. Lovie Smith is a great individual.

Unfortunately he has proven to be a poor NFL Head Coach. I know, I know, he made a Super Bowl with the Bears. He started out as a competent leader of a veteran and talent-laden team in Chicago and guided them to 11 and 13 wins in his second and third seasons. That Super Bowl appearance came in 2006. Since that time he’s coached every year but one (2013) and his teams have missed the playoffs every year but one. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find that even his successful seasons were not so impressive; of the 10 seasons he has been a head coach, his team has finished under the preseason projected win total from the sports books 8 times…and that includes two of his playoff years.

He’s never been able to find the right pairing of coordinators. Lovie’s offensive choices in Chicago still raise the collective blood pressure of that city. In-game adjustments to his game plan? Forget about it. Player development has never been a strong suit either, and that curiously holds true more for his defenses to which he devotes the vast majority of his attention.

Those defenses are a little less vanilla now than in his strict Tampa-2 base D of the prior decade. The corners play more press/bail and the safeties have more variability, and the ends play less Wide-9 and even drop on occasion. These are good things. Unfortunately Lovie just doesn’t have the horses he rode to success in his Chicago heyday. Up front he barely has their colts other than McCoy. Smith just isn’t the kind of master tactician, or master motivator, or master teacher, to overcome not having a loaded roster.

Sure, he has his assets. He’s great at coaching challenges. His special teams units are consistently fantastic, last year’s Bucs (dead last in Pro Football Focus grading) excepted. Smith is good at deflecting negative attention from his team. He fosters a family feel, and that’s important. It could be the most important thing he does for young Winston. 

Forecast: 2015 should be better than 2014 in Tampa. The young nucleus has a new leader who is a proven winner with talent that could transcend. It probably won’t result in a lot of wins early, but the elevator is going up. Slowly.

There are some winnable games on the early schedule, and if the Bucs can open with wins in Cleveland and at home over New Orleans, which is tangible, the confidence could carry them to seven or eight wins. Turning some of those close losses last year into wins will come from better QB and special teams play and more defenders making big plays at key times. Still, it’s far more realistic to expect this team to flounder as Winston gets acclimated to the NFL. They’re a strong offseason away from competing in the topsy-turvy NFC South, though I suspect they split their divisional record this year. Tampa Bay finishes 5-11.