Watch Johnson’s Numbers Jump
April 15th, 2015
It is realistic to expect newly-acquired George Johnson to resume his tackle-making game.
It may end up as a footnote in Bucs history, but there is reason for optimism with former Tampa Bay defensive end George Johnson returning after a trade of sorts with the Lions today.
Even Bill Polian, NFL front office guru, was raving about the acquisition. We will see if he and Jason Licht are right.
The thing is, as Polian suggested, Johnson finally showed shoe progress playing a part-time role with the Lions. Joe will allow Woody Cummings of the Tampa Tribune take it from here.
He got into 46-percent of the snaps for the Lions last year. I’d look for a little more than that with Bucs https://t.co/VCPtgNwYS4
— Roy Cummings (@RCummingsTBO) April 15, 2015
Johnson easily could log more work for the Bucs. And if Johnson proves as talented this fall as he finally did last fall, Bucs fans would not be unreasonable to expect more than the six sacks he recorded in 2014.
April 15th, 2015 at 3:56 pm
Alex…I will take spell check for 100.
April 15th, 2015 at 3:58 pm
we will see if his numbers jump. I don’t think they will because he did play on one of the top rated d-lines in the nfl.
that is why if I were the bucs I would still consider drafting an aggressive pass rusher with the #1 overall pick like
Dante Fowler Jr of the florida gators. mike mayock of nfl network has him rated as the #1 pure edge rusher in this draft.
April 15th, 2015 at 4:00 pm
Buc1987 Says:
April 15th, 2015 at 11:04 am
I’m bringing the biggest fattest cigar with me to Ray Jay on draft day.
————————————————————————————
Thanks Bro!!! I like a big fat cigar!!! 🙂
WINSTON!!!!
April 15th, 2015 at 4:01 pm
5th rounder was too much for GJ…we could have had him had we just offered him the full 3 million per year…the Lions could not have matched it without restructuring other players, which I am sure is not popular amongst the non-QBs of the league.
Homer Doh! at Licht
The old saying goes…Penny wise Pound foolish!
April 15th, 2015 at 4:02 pm
He’ll have plenty of opportunity…..the defense will be on the field often and long
April 15th, 2015 at 4:03 pm
Rutgers proud! Go George
April 15th, 2015 at 4:06 pm
@port richey george
Are you actually suggesting that the Bucs use their first overall pick for a pass rusher???
You can’t win in this league without a QB. They are plenty of pass rushers in the draft, the bucs can draft one in later rounds.
April 15th, 2015 at 4:06 pm
In 2 years we can go after Michael Johnson…….
April 15th, 2015 at 4:14 pm
A 5th seems awfully high for a rotational depth player that wasn’t good enough to play on Schiano’s defense. Sounds like the lapdog GM screwed something up with the free-agency route and had to use a trade to keep the player. These bozos running this team are way more embarrassing than anything I have seen in the last 10 years prior. Slow-motion train wreck that never ends
April 15th, 2015 at 4:14 pm
Aaron Hernandez found guilty of murder! This reflects poorly on a lot of people including fans! Just win baby eh? Can’t win with choirboys!
Whether it’s Kraft or Belicheat or Urban Meyer and the Gators a LOT of folks looked the other way as Hernandez kept getting away with everything short of murder.
At the end of the day he finally committed a crime he couldn’t get away with. He was a tremendous football player and a horrible human being. Do we think he’s the only one like that in the league?
April 15th, 2015 at 4:17 pm
You guys got hosed… 3 mil a year plus you had to give up a fifth round pick. The lions don’t have any dead money on the books for him either. Hope you Bucs fans have a decent year though.
April 15th, 2015 at 4:22 pm
Dallas says….”These bozos running this team are way more embarrassing than anything I have seen in the last 10 years prior.”
they are about to make Jameis the #1 overall pick….on and off field issues…..
April 15th, 2015 at 4:22 pm
we always get hosed lions fan. licht is our gm
buclife
April 15th, 2015 at 4:24 pm
Lovie And Licht are pretty much idiots. First the want this jameis kid, now giving up picks for no reason. wow.
April 15th, 2015 at 4:24 pm
Licht Sucks.
April 15th, 2015 at 4:27 pm
L&L got hosed on the Tim Wright TE deal too…..had to scrambled to (forgot which trade this offseason) to get back full compliment of draft picks
April 15th, 2015 at 4:51 pm
I guess we will find out if Johnson is an up and coming talent, or if he got his 6 sacks, because his ex teammates Suh and Fairly got the main attention of blockers, and made it easy for him to get to the QB.
Poor Detroit, they have lost almost all of their defensive line, from last year.
April 15th, 2015 at 5:02 pm
I was unhappy to see Clayborn leave but I think this move has some potential solid upside to replace him. Played for the Bucs earlier in career and clearly wanted to come back. Get after that QB Georgie and Buc fans will love you!!
April 15th, 2015 at 5:04 pm
A fifth and a seventh for Johnson? LMFFAO! This alone should get L&L fired after this season. Where is the positive spin on this GREAT deal? I don’t want to hear that any potential DE picked after the fifth round is automatic garbage.
Wow…Just Wow! How do we continue to year after year make these deals?
BTW, Aaron Hernandez scored a 17 on his Wonderlic….
April 15th, 2015 at 5:05 pm
Some have proposed that George Johnson had the good fortune to have Suh and Fairley take up all of the blockers and that’s how he got his sacks. Does that mean you think McCoy, McDonald, Melton, and Spence will not be able to do the same thing? If so, I think you underestimate the interior D-line of the Bucs.
April 15th, 2015 at 5:08 pm
The next Simeon Rice.
Just kidding.
April 15th, 2015 at 5:10 pm
It wasn’t a 5th and 7th. We swapped 168th pick (a very late 5th / borderline 6th) for their 1st 7th round pick. Still a decent drop back in the draft but it was a pick swap not us just giving up a pick.
I’ll take an NFL player at 26 coming off 6 sacks playing less than 1/2 the defensive snaps over whatever we would have been looking at during one of the last picks of the 5th round.
After the 4th round you are almost as likely to land a good player in the undfrafted pool of free agents as you are in those late rounds.
Still have 8 total picks.
April 15th, 2015 at 5:12 pm
Speaking for Pablo
“Pablo is confused by all of these Johnson’s….and especially about watching someone’s Johnson jump. Pablo’s johnson doesn’t jump….it sort of skips. Pablo would be happy to have someone on the Bucs who’s name ends in a Z”
April 15th, 2015 at 5:17 pm
The point you seem to ignore Cornelius is that if the Bucs had structure the contract correctly to begin with, the Lions have nothing to go on and the Bucs can get him for nothing. Instead they got caught and to avoid the ruling, chose to work something out
Obviously they felt there was a good chance they were going to lose the ruling. Giving up 60+ draft spots for a backup/rotational player is simply terrible. You’ll notice the best franchises never do this, but the worst ones (like us and the Raiders and Jags) will.
April 15th, 2015 at 5:18 pm
ColoradoBuc…
I completely agree with you! The interior of the Bucs DLine is excellent and now deep. Will anyone on the outside, please take advantage of this and get pressure on the QB!?!?
April 15th, 2015 at 5:24 pm
“As long as this Johnson is better than the last Johnson, and costs less, I’m all over it!”
Said every gay man that solicits male prostitutes at 3:00 a.m.
April 15th, 2015 at 5:53 pm
The back end of the draft is a crap shoot, the Bucs still have a 5th round pick and now they have another competent body @DE. Gripe on “Bucs fans”. Hope this guy puts up big numbers this year and shoves it up your a$$.
Who is the last bucs player drafted in the back half of the 5th that has done anything of significance?
April 15th, 2015 at 6:37 pm
We would have been ecstatic to get a DE with the 168th pick to have 6 sacks. If he performs at that same rate its a solid pick up, better than that and its a great deal. This isn’t Mankins for a 3rd. Plus we grab another late rounder that could turn be a future player or fuel for trading back up. Most of you are just too dramatic about everything.
April 15th, 2015 at 6:42 pm
Not happy how this played out
April 15th, 2015 at 7:27 pm
Man, not happy with giving up a 5th rounder for an unproven rotation player. He was great in the rotation, but he’s not a starter. Sad thing is, he is now probably our best DE on the team, him or Jacquies Smith.
I won’t lose sleep over a 5th rounder, but the fact that Licht got fleeced on yet another trade because he couldn’t seal the deal with the offer sheet is alarming. Every single trade made by him and Lovie has seen the Bucs on the losing end of the deal, with the exception of the jury still being out on the Mark Barron deal, however I’m sure that’ll come back to bite us sooner or later.
April 15th, 2015 at 8:13 pm
Face it Bucs fans, once again the Glazers managed to hire completely incompetent leadership to run this team. If it seems like they can’t do anything right it is because they can’t do ANYTHING right.
The only hope that exists is them not screwing up this first round pick and eventually getting replaced by someone that can develop Winston.
April 15th, 2015 at 8:22 pm
This was a great deal by L&L. We needed this player badly and we got him. For next to nothing. Detroit was going to match our offer so we had to do something more and we did. Anyone with a problem with this deal has $hit for brains.
April 15th, 2015 at 8:27 pm
I’m not quite sure what the problem is here. Is a 5th round pick for a player that has started in the NFL is still relatively young a bad deal? Not sure what the stars are on 5th round picks but I believe many are likely not to make the team and most won’t start a game first year. In my mind it’s not a bad deal.
April 15th, 2015 at 8:49 pm
It’s a bad deal because the Bucs didn’t have to give anything up to get him. If the Lions didn’t match the deal, they got nothing. But the Bucs obviously screwed up the contract enough that they had to trade back 60+ spots in the draft to avoid the arbitrator. If they thought they were in the clear, this makes no sense. So they lost 60+ spots in the draft due to incompetence. That’s just not good for a rotational player. It’d be one thing if it were a starter, but it’s not.
April 15th, 2015 at 8:54 pm
I keep hearing people talking about sack totals. I’ll say it again sacks without forcing fumbles are mere glorified trackles for lost. Keep your 10 sacks and give me 50 pressures and let’s study the results afterwards… Another thing to all my bros on here, I know most of you remember the Vikings John Randall right. Do you recall either D ends on the 15 and 1 Vikings team from I believe 1999. Point I’m trying to make is they didn’t have four stud D line men,they had one bad ass in Randall. We need McCoy our current big money guy to be our version John Randall and we’ll be just fine.
April 15th, 2015 at 9:05 pm
This “trade” feels like we got hosed. If this guy doesn’t have 6-8 sacks this year…impact sacks…we got robbed. Losing faith in Licht. Hope this draft redeems him or he’s nothing but an empty suit with an expensive freaking haircut.
April 15th, 2015 at 9:08 pm
Good point Nole on something something …god your name is long
April 15th, 2015 at 9:32 pm
The big question is why did the Bucs give up a draft pick when they didn’t have to? Did the Bucs know they screwed up the contract and decided it was best to send compensation, even though they weren’t required to? Or, did Lovie and Licht want Johnson that bad that they didn’t want to risk the arbitrator ruling in favor of the Lions? I certainly don’t want to believe that Licht is that bad of a GM that he simply gave up a 5th round pick for no reason.
April 15th, 2015 at 9:36 pm
My bad Warren I’ll figure out a way to condense it bro.
April 15th, 2015 at 9:36 pm
Why are people so upset about losing the fifth round pick? Fifth round picks are special teams and back ups. And for the bucs it usually means being on the team for 4 years and not doing a darn thing.
April 15th, 2015 at 9:39 pm
Raving joe? Raving: wild irrational or crazy talk.
Really? Lets not out use our vocabulary.
April 15th, 2015 at 9:41 pm
I do understand that we should have got him with out trading the pick. But stuff happens. In the end we still got the guy we wanted. Screw some non contributing rookie, we have a potential starter. The important thing is that we are bringing in productive talent.
April 15th, 2015 at 9:53 pm
Correct me if I’m wrong but I just read we traded the second pick of two fifth round picks for they’re first of two seventh round picks. Puzzled by the uproar over this?
April 15th, 2015 at 10:07 pm
The Bucs lost 63 spots in the draft. The effectively moved back two rounds. Should have just made the contract front loaded, cap space is obviously not an issue here like it is for Detroit. $5 million in year one and no shot they match. Instead they got cute and it cost them.
April 16th, 2015 at 1:04 am
stupid move a 5th for a 7th rounder and a de back up!
April 16th, 2015 at 2:02 am
Of course I hope the move pans out but isn’t this the same logic applied to Anthony Collins last year?
April 16th, 2015 at 2:11 am
People are angry, despite that its a 5th round pick, because although the draft can be a crap shoot, you increase your odds of hitting a jackpot the earlier and more often you pick.
April 16th, 2015 at 12:05 pm
Jump
as long as its not out of the frying pan into the fire.
April 16th, 2015 at 12:24 pm
I echo what Lord Cornelius said. I always like when I read these blogs and come across someone who actually has something intelligent to say about what we did. Swapping pick in the fifth round, even though we pick later in the fifth. That late in the draft the value has fell off dramatically. At that point you’re drafting guys you think have potential to be good in the future or adding depth. Also we took there seventh round pick which just adds more opportunity for us to get lucky with someone or add depth as well, and finally we get a guy for less money than our contract offer originally was to just get him. Johnson will have an impact on our team as a rotational play. If any of you dumbass actually paid attention you’d notice that the rotational d-line are just as important as the starters. Especially in the Tampa 2 type defense that Lovie and his crew run, all the pressure is generated from the front for about 80% of the time. It’s good to have depth here and the guys who are rotating in behind the starters play almost as often. It also add solid depth for injuries. Look at the Seahawks, they have been to the Super Bowl two years in a row because they have a lot of quality depth on their team, that way when their starters get hurt there’s no drop off. Simply adding quality depth for a crapshoot fifth rounder a little earlier in the draft. I don’t see where this is a bad idea.
April 16th, 2015 at 12:44 pm
I meant swapping our fifth for their seventh. We have Baltimore’s fifth rounder.