Andy Benoit

Joe is cleaning out NFL types from his notebook, guys that Joe has talked Bucs football with this year. One is X’s and O’s guru Andy Benoit of theMMQB.com.

Benoit is a true tape-watching madman — and a truly nice guy. Joe enjoys the way he takes really, really, really technical football jargon and breaks it down so your standard beer-swilling, chicken-wings-eating football fanatic can digest it.

JoeBucsFan: With the Bucs being so awful, the team could make upgrades all over the place. What would you do if you were Jason Licht or Lovie Smith?

Andy Benoit: It starts at quarterback, obviously, and that is the case with a lot of teams. I think Tampa might be a quarterback away, which sounds ridiculous. I thought they would have won the division [last season]. That didn’t work out at least the way I thought. They need two things. They need a quarterback and they need speed on offense, somewhere. They have good receivers but they are all the same type of guys. They are not very fast. That changes the way teams approach you. Really, with a team with that much talent, they are a team that is too easy to defend.

Joe: So that would explain why Lovie was so enamored with Robert Herron, a guy with wheels but he just can’t catch, which is a nagging problem to have as a wide receiver.

Benoit: Anyone can just bring in a fast guy. They need a real wide receiver speed. Not a developmental guy or some guy they can train if he keeps his hands out of his pockets. They need a real wide receiver.

Joe: So, you would be more inclined to get a wide receiver high in the draft than, say, an offensive lineman?

Benoit: No, thank you. I forgot about the line. They need three things: They a speed receiver, they need a quarterback and they need an entire offensive line. Maybe [Demar] Dotson stays. Any of the other spots should be up for grabs. It was by far the worst offensive line in the league last year.

Joe: So you are not very high on Dotson?

Benoit: I’m not low on Dotson, either. You can plug in a right tackle but the other spots were tremendous liabilities for them.

Joe: Now Lovie has been talking about possibly moving Dotson to left tackle. For a guy that is pushing 30 years-old, do you want to do that?

Benoit: No, you don’t want to do that. He hasn’t played very much in his career. They have a starting right tackle, [the rest] is offseason talk.

Joe: Speaking of ineffective, what a swing and a miss Michael Johnson was.

Benoit: Well, they didn’t know what type of player he was. Michael Johnson is not an edge rusher. He is better cast in a hybrid type of scheme. Not so much a 34 scheme. I think he is a 4-3 player but not a pure pass rusher. He does a lot of miscellaneous things remarkably well. But in that scheme [of Lovie’s] there isn’t any miscellaneous things. There is a four-man rush. It is a straight-up zone scheme. I understand why they took a swing at Johnson because he was probably the best D-end available last year. Jared Allen was just as bad in Chicago and that was the other big D-end. Johnson is a better fit for Minnesota or Cincinnati where they move him around a lot and make use of him in other areas.

Joe: Is the Tampa-2 dead? No, Lovie doesn’t run a straight Tampa-2, but Jon Gruden is always talking about how the Tampa-2 is dead. That it is outdated. Or has it evolved?

Benoit: I thought at times it was dead. It requires a lot of talent in a lot of areas. It also matters what wrinkles you play out of the Tampa-2. Do you lock the slot cornerback man-to-man on the third receiver? If you do that and you have a good slot corner who can play man-to-man and everyone else plays Tampa-2, you can be OK there. You need a rangy middle linebacker. I’m not sure they have that in Tampa. I don’t know that Tampa-2 is quite dead. I think it is on life support.