FAB 3. STEELE GETS A NEW PRESENT IN HOWARD
You couldn’t blame Bucs assistant coaches George Warhop, defensive line coach Jay Hayes and secondary coach Jon Hoke for being a little bit jealous of new tight ends coach Ben Steele, who replaced Jon Embree this offseason after Embree left to become the assistant head coach and tight ends coach in San Francisco.

After all, Warhop is entering his 23rd year coaching in the NFL, Hayes is entering his 19th season in the league and Hoke is entering his 15th year as an NFL assistant coach, while Steele is a first-year position coach, and the Bucs didn’t draft a single offensive lineman, a pass rusher or a cornerback this year (Hoke coaches the cornerbacks while defensive backs coach Brett Maxie coaches the safeties). Hayes did get run-stuffing USC defensive tackle Stevie Tu’ikolovatu, but only with the Bucs’ seventh round pick.

Bucs TEs coach Ben Steele – Photo courtesy of the Buccaneers

Steele, the rookie assistant coach, what did he get under the draft day tree at One Buccaneer Place last Thursday night?

A shiny new toy named O.J. Howard, drafted 19th overall in the first round.

Merry Christmas, Ben.

Warhop, Hayes and Hoke aren’t actually jealous, though. They are pretty excited about having Howard, a top 10 talent, wearing pewter and red as a result of a draft day slide as teams picking before the Buccaneers at 19 mostly drafted for need rather than best player available.

Everybody at One Buccaneer Place is excited about drafting Howard, but Steele might be the most excited. Although Steele hasn’t been made available to the media for interviews, I spoke this week with Bucs veteran tight ends Luke Stocker and Cameron Brate, who said he was fired up – not only about Howard, but for the opportunity to run the tight end room after spending the last three years on Tampa Bay’s staff as the team’s offensive quality control coach, assisting Embree with the tight ends the last couple of seasons.

“Even though we’ve switched position coaches – and I’ve done it a bunch of times – it doesn’t feel like a switch with Ben,” Stocker said. “Ben has been in there and he knows all of us personally. There hasn’t been that period of him trying to get to know us and us getting to know him. That’s already been established. It’s been a really easy transition.

“The past couple of years, Ben has been the assistant tight ends coach. It hasn’t been his room. He hasn’t run the meetings, and you always wonder what it’s going to be like with a new guy. Ben has been kind of quiet the past couple of years, but since he’s taken over the room he’s had a great presence about him. He’s been a great teacher. He breaks it down and makes things simple for us. I think he’s doing a great job so far and I think he has a bright future ahead as our coach.”

Steele was a small school tight end at Mesa State where he was an All-Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference selection before playing seven years as an NFL tight end from 2001-07 with the San Francisco 49ers, Oakland Raiders, Minnesota Vikings, Seattle Seahawks, Green Bay Packers and Houston Texans. He started coaching at his alma mater, Mesa State (now known as Colorado Mesa) in 2008 and then worked at the University of Colorado from 2009-10 as a recruiting assistant and graduate assistant.

Bucs TE coach Ben Steele: Photo courtesy of the Buccaneers

He then worked two seasons at the University of California under former head coach Jeff Tedford, who brought Steele to Tampa Bay when he was hired as the Bucs offensive coordinator in 2014. Steele was the tight ends coach and recruiting coordinator at UC-Davis in 2013.

“We’re fortunate that we have a qualified coach like Ben already on our staff and are able to fill this role from within,” Koetter said about Steele’s promotion in February. “He earned it through the quality of his work. Ben played the position at the NFL level and has spent a great deal of time with our tight ends on the practice field and in the meeting room. We know he will do an excellent job leading that group going forward.”

Embree, who is regarded as one of the NFL’s best tight ends coaches, and Steele helped Brate emerge from an undrafted free agent out of Harvard into an offensive weapon where he caught a career-high 57 catches for 660 yards and eight touchdowns last season.

“I was really excited when I found out that Ben was going to be getting the job,” Brate said. “It was tough because the last three years I got real close with Coach Embree and I owe a lot of my success and the opportunities that I have here to him. I was pretty bummed to see him go, but when I found out that Coach Steele was the one who got the job I was excited.

“Everyone in the tight end room knew that Coach Steele was going to be given an opportunity to coach tight ends, whether it was with the Bucs or someone else. He goes about it the right way. He knows the ins and outs of our offense. He’s the guy I would go to or Luke Stocker would go to with any questions schematically because he’s so good with the X’s and O’s. We’ve had position meetings the last couple of weeks and we’re excited to work with him and we know he’s going to do a good job.”

The fact that Steele was primarily a blocking tight end, but with four catches for 42 yards and a touchdown on his resume, only helps ease his transition into coaching the position he played in the NFL.

“I don’t think Dirk played in the NFL, right?” Brate said. “It’s not a requirement to be a successful coach in the NFL. I think Dirk is unbelievable. But with the small tricks of the craft, Ben has seen it all from his playing days from his years in the NFL. There are so many small details that he can give to us gives him a lot of credibility.”

Bucs TE O.J. Howard – Photo courtesy of the University of Alabama

Stocker, who turns 29 in July and is just 10 years younger than Steele, is entering his seventh season in Tampa Bay and is the elder statesman in the tight end room. But Stocker’s command of the playbook and willingness to help others, such as Brate the last two years, will give Howard another coach of sorts to help him quickly grasp Koetter’s playbook and help ease Steele’s transition to full-time position coach.

“I do enjoy helping guys,” Stocker said. “I always like to do something and see it materialize and coaching athletics in general – you get to do that. You get that instant gratification of explaining something and trying to help them out and then you see the light bulb come on with something they were trying to do, but just couldn’t. You give them that little nudge of what they needed to do it. I like the feeling it gives me. Hopefully after I’m done playing I can get more involved in that.”

Stocker may in fact follow in Steele’s footsteps one day as he aspires to be a football coach. In the meantime, Steele gets to enjoy a brand new present in Howard as Christmas arrived in April this year.

And in a room that includes a first-round pick in addition to Brate, Stocker and others, it’s not only an early Christmas for Steele, but the makings of a happy new year, too.