FAB 3. Inside Licht’s Bucs Draft Board

Originally ran on PewterReport.com on May 12, 2017

Tampa Bay general manager Jason Licht isn’t alone.

He’s not the only G.M. that snickers or chuckles or bursts out laughing at the media’s depiction of the NFL Draft and some players that draft experts and draft gurus in the media (this site included) consider to be first-rounders.

In every NFL war room there aren’t typically 32 first-round caliber players on team’s draft boards.

Nor are there even 253 players that have draftable grades in each team’s draft board, including Tampa Bay’s – despite the fact that there were 253 players drafted from April 27-29.

Bucs GM Jason Licht and head coach Dirk Koetter – Photo courtesy of the Buccaneers

In my post-draft chat with Licht we delved into his 2017 draft board, but let’s start with his war room experience with head coach Dirk Koetter for the second time.

“Dirk has been through it for a full year and he’s been through two drafts now and the whole process twice,” Licht said. “He’s got a better feel for me and how I like to operate. Obviously, he plays a big role in the draft for us and I lean on Dirk for a lot of reasons. We watch a lot of tape together. He’s even more supportive of everything I do.

“We have a great relationship and it’s as good as it’s ever been. I’m a very big believer in the inclusive process – I’m a big believer in getting everybody’s opinion. I want everybody involved in it. I want us to take guys we all like and he understands the importance of having that inclusive process. Not that he didn’t before, but he understands the rhyme and reason of it and the way I do things.”

One of the things Licht likes to do is bring Koetter, director of college scouting Mike Biehl, director of player personnel John Spytek and others into his office and pick apart a draft prospect’s film and the scouts’ notes.

“There is a time at the end of the process where you’re punching holes in every single player,” Licht said. “At the beginning you think, ‘Oh we have all these great players in the draft this year’ and then you start punching holes in them. Dirk is a positive person and he does a great job of saying, ‘These are the players you like. These are the reasons I like them, too, and this is what they can do for us.”

Licht, Biehl and Tampa Bay’s scouts start the scouting process in the summer by reviewing the thousands of eligible seniors and a few prime underclassmen that may be talented enough to want to declare early. By the time the draft arrives that list is narrowed considerably.

Licht said he typically has draftable grades on only 120 players – despite the fact that more than double that number get drafted each year.

Bucs head coach Dirk Koetter, TE O.J. Howard & GM Jason Licht – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

“We slot players in my top 120 – and this year it extended to 135 draftable players,” Licht said. “We whittle it down. Every year there are over 2,000 players that are going to be draft eligible, and then you throw in the underclassmen and it’s a lot. We get it down to 300 in December on our big draft board. By the week before the draft we get it down to between 100 and 150 players – this year it was 135 – that we feel are worth taking with a draft pick and that could legitimately make our team.”

As for the number of first-round-caliber players this year?

“I don’t think there is a single team that has 32 guys ranked as first-round players in any year,” Licht said. “It’s 17 or 18 – somewhere in there. That’s what we had.”

So sitting at No. 19, the Bucs were likely to select a player that may have actually been a non-first-rounder on their board – except that Alabama tight end O.J. Howard, a top 10-caliber player, fell to Tampa Bay.

“We had him fairly high on our board,” Licht said.

The Bucs also had a very high grade on Texas A&M safety Justin Evans, who was selected at No. 50 with the team’s second-round pick.

“The 32nd-ranked player is obviously the first pick in the second round,” Licht said. “We had [Evans] ranked high enough to where it would have taken an awful lot for us to get out of there [at No. 50]. We think it was good value.”

Licht and the Bucs passed on Florida State running back Dalvin Cook in the first round, and may have done so even if Howard had been drafted earlier in the first round ahead of Tampa Bay’s spot at No. 19. But would Licht have considered him with the team’s second-round pick?

“We thought Dalvin was a very good football player,” Licht said. “We had him ranked pretty high. It was a tough decision, so I don’t know. I don’t want to say anything negative towards Justin because we got him. I didn’t think Dalvin would be there at No. 50 and he wasn’t.

Bucs head coach Dirk Koetter and GM Jason Licht – Photo courtesy of the Buccaneers

“If we would have used draft capital to go up and get him I don’t think we would have ended up with the players that we got. It would have caused a chain reaction in our draft. I made a decision – I really liked Dalvin – and at some point – I’m not saying that we did or didn’t try. But I’m happy with who we got.”

Not only did the Bucs get a great value in Evans, who was ranked higher than the 50th player on their draft board, Tampa Bay also got a steal with Penn State wide receiver Chris Godwin, who was also rated much higher than the 84th overall selection.

“We did,” Licht said. “I’ll put it like this. You have to get ‘rounds’ out of your head when you are talking about drafting. NFL teams look at the draft differently than the media. We don’t even use the word ‘round’ – we do at a certain point, but after the draft we don’t say, ‘We had a third-round grade on him.’ The players just come off our board. If we feel like we can move back and still get the player, we will. In the case of Justin, there was a run on safeties. The few that were left we didn’t feel like would be there in the second round.”

Now here’s something that might blow your mind.

“Of our six picks they were all ranked within the top 90 of our board,” Licht said. “Now that doesn’t mean we had everybody ranked no later than a third-round pick. But we had them within our top 90 of our 135.

“Stevie [Tu’ikolovatu] was sticking out like a sore thumb in the seventh round, and there was a lot of strong conviction, including from myself, that Stevie would make our football team. So I thought I’d go up and get him. We had some intel that there were some teams ahead of us that were going to take him. We feel pretty good about him.”

The Bucs drafted six players that were ranked within the top 90 players on their board, and added a few more undrafted free agents that had draftable grades, too.

“Antony Auclair was on that list, as well,” Licht said. “We think he’s going to have a legit chance to make it. There were very few ‘Ys’ in this draft and he was one of them. We love the way he carries himself off the field, and he’s raw, but there are a lot of tools there. And his dad drives a Labatt Blue beer truck, so it’s a win-win!”

Bucs TE Antony Auclair – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

Licht, Koetter and the rest of the front office were ready to crack open some beers after landing their draft haul. But with six picks – Tampa Bay’s sixth-rounder was used to trade up in the third round to get linebacker Kendell Beckwith – not all of Tampa Bay’s holes were able to be filled.

While the Bucs liked USC cornerback Adoreé Jackson and were considering drafting him in the first round, Tampa Bay didn’t draft a cornerback at all despite the fact that Brent Grimes is 34 and is entering the final year of his contract.

“Yeah, he was a possibility for us at 19,” Licht said. “We really like Ryan Smith and what he did for us last year. We got a sneak peak at him out here at the end of the year. There were some tempting moments for us [in the draft]. I’m always going to look at that position as well. It just didn’t fall right. It wasn’t there for us at the time and the guys we picked we liked better than the corners that were available.”

Tampa Bay did sign veteran cornerback Robert McClain, who played for defensive coordinator Mike Smith in Atlanta, on Wednesday.

Nor did Licht draft a defensive end despite bringing in three high-profile pass rushers in Derek Barnett, Taco Charlton and Jordan Willis for pre-draft visits.

“I don’t think you’ll ever hear from me that we have enough pass rush from the outside,” Licht said. “I think that’s something we’ll always entertain. It didn’t fall to us. We had a lot of needs this year. We would have liked to [draft a defensive end] and we’ll continue to monitor what’s out there until August – and after August.

“You mentioned corner and you mentioned defensive end, we would like to focus even more on defense moving forward.”

When it comes to Licht’s draft board he does emphasize the team’s needs when ranking the draft prospects.

“Need plays a big part,” Licht said. “I use our big draft board as a guide to when we put that top whatever together. I’ll take layers at a certain grade – and if we have an extreme need with one position over another – and if they are the same grade the need will trump those other positions.”

I asked Licht if a player like North Carolina quarterback Mitchell Trubisky was even on Tampa Bay’s draft board considering he was destined to be a first-round pick, and with Jameis Winston entrenched as the team’s franchise quarterback, the Bucs wouldn’t even consider drafting Trubisky in the first round.

Bucs WR Chris Godwin – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

“We go through a lot of exercises where if we were drafting first overall, who are we taking?” Licht said. “Second overall – who are we taking? Third, fourth and fifth and so on. At what point if Mitch Trubisky is there – and crazier things have happened – would we take this quarterback? Where would we take him? Who is he better than on our team? Is he better as a backup than some of these other players that we feel could be starters at other positions? That backup quarterback role is very important to me. As you know I held on to Mike Glennon.”

SR’s Update – 7/7/17: After the team’s OTA and mini-camp season, the Bucs are ecstatic about their 2017 draft class. The team has seen O.J. Howard, the team’s first-round pick, make significant strides and expects him to see plenty of playing time as a rookie, especially paired with tight end Cameron Brate, who has had a tremendous offseason. The real gem of the class could be third-round pick Chris Godwin, a wide receiver out of Penn State. Godwin has been awfully impressive with how quickly he has learned head coach Dirk Koetter’s complex playbook and how well he runs routes, gets open and makes contested catches. The team is high on every draft pick, in addition to undrafted free agent tight end Antony Auclair, and I expect at least eight rookies to make the Bucs’ 2017 53-man roster, which is actually a challenging task considering the improved talent on the depth chart.