Jason Licht Ranked
August 12th, 2021
Different vibe for all.
Here is a perfect example of what winning can do for a guy.
Joe doesn’t think Bucs AC/DC-loving general manager Jason Licht has ever been selected in the top half of general managers in these annual GM rankings that various publications pump out.
It all had to do with wins and losses. It’s always about wins and losses. Only once since Licht was named general manager in 2014 had the Bucs delivered a winning season.
Now on the heels of winning the Bucs’ second title in franchise history and with Licht somehow keeping all 22+1 starters, Vinnie Iyer of the Sporting News believes Licht has bolted from the bottom tier to the very top.
Iyer has Licht ranked No. 1.
Licht reeled in the big fish, quarterback Tom Brady, who put the finishing touches on the slow play toward a Super Bowl. But no pun intended, the move shed light on the fact the Bucs had drafted core players well for a while (see wide receiver, offensive line, linebacker and secondary) and took some nice flyers (see edge rusher) before Brady. Brady’s influence also led to a few more key pickups. (Leonard Fournette, Rob Gronkowski, Antonio Brown). Licht followed that up with a masterful job of keeping a championship roster intact for a real shot at a repeat.
As we found out with the Super Bowl season, Licht was doing his job picking players. The problem was, until he coaxed Bucco Bruce Arians out of retirement, the Bucs’ previous coaching staffs were Pearl Harboring him by doing a lousy job — if any job at all — in developing the players Licht gave them.
As Joe is fond of saying, winning is the ultimate perfume. Now with his team among the best in the NFL, Licht is considered a standard-bearer of NFL suits.
August 12th, 2021 at 12:08 am
Everyone MISSES in the draft. i.e Aguayo, Hargreaves, Spence, etc.
But if you get enough ‘right’ especially when drafting for value on players that went later than projected (and turn out to be great players) then you can really make progress as a team.
Well, one could say Licht & company have had some of the best drafts in the past few years and now it’s really paying off the for the team.
August 12th, 2021 at 12:09 am
If he had signed Teddy Bridgewater, him and Arians would be in the unemployment line right now. I still do not believe that nonsense rumor that they’d want a limp armed QB who is afraid to throw downfield for an offense that is based around throwing down the field.
But it’s amazing what signing the best player of all time does for your team, and for your rep. It was a franchise changing signing and I’d be interested to know how much the Glazers had to do with it, if anything. I could see the Glazers seeing $$$ in their eyes if the team could coax Brady here since you sell a ton of merch and you get a lot of national TV coverage and prime time games. I’d be surprised if they weren’t pushing for the signing.
Also after year after year of hearing the Glazers are cheap and terrible owners, just look at how much cash they’ve put out to keep the team together. Those void year deals still cost actual dollars, and they’ve spent a lot of it.
None of this is meant to take away from the job Licht has done, unless he actually wanted to turn the team over to Bridgewater, in which case he should be retroactively fired even though it didn’t happen.
August 12th, 2021 at 12:45 am
They were very serious about Bridgewater. Just goes to show you how little they thought of Winston’s gazillion turnovers.
August 12th, 2021 at 12:59 am
It’s so refreshing to see players get developed by a professional coaching staff. They don’t try to put squares in holes. They find what the player is good at and maximizes that ability to fit into the scheme. Other coaches refuse to do so they say ” this is my scheme and this is the way it is done period!” I understand different regimes picking talent to suit the head coach or D coaches schemes. But the confidence to mold talent and figure you will find a way for this player to be successfull and then scheme around their ability is coaching is it not?
August 12th, 2021 at 1:07 am
I always thought he knew what he was doing and would succeed if given the chance.
August 12th, 2021 at 1:14 am
Pete had Jason easily ranked #1 until the Kyle pick. Jason fell to #32 after that & now reminds me of my drunken, slob, stepdad
August 12th, 2021 at 1:22 am
Rod, good point on the Brady signing growing the Glazer’s ROI. Interestingly the Forbes NFL valuations are out (google ’em) and the value of the team went up 29% last year, despite revenues falling 55 million. Gee, I wonder why?!
August 12th, 2021 at 2:46 am
I feel you. It would suck if my stepdad picked Kyle.
August 12th, 2021 at 2:50 am
I love how Arians doesn’t try to make square pegs fit into round holes like most coaches you see, but I think his greatness is somewhat exaggerated.
The difference really just was Tom Brady, who just has a knack for making people around him look a lot better than they really are. Arians and Leftwich tried to do to Tom Brady what they did to Jameis Winston and many QBs before him–put him in position to make lots of mistakes, and Brady was doing just that in the 1st half of the season… the difference was Brady’s intelligence & experience, where he simply forced BA & BL to adapt to his way of running an offense, and by the end of the season we saw the greatly improved results.
August 12th, 2021 at 3:32 am
@Izod <—– 100% truth
August 12th, 2021 at 5:09 am
@Izod … “The difference really just was Tom Brady, who just has a knack for making people around him look a lot better than they really are.”
There’s no question in my mind Izod that Tom Brady is The GOAT, but … it wasn’t JUST Tom Brady that got us to the top last year. Obviously you & I will never know what went on ‘behind the curtain’ last year, but the Bucs’ success AFTER the Bye week was no fluke. Because of COVID & them having quite a few new pieces in the puzzle, I think it took this group of players 12 games to actually evolve into a true TEAM.
It’s not a matter IMO of Tom Brady making them ‘look better than they really are’. This TEAM is supremely talented, on offense, defense and on special teams. I think it took them 12 games to figure out how to really work together as a well-oiled machine, and yes, for all our very talented players to consistently make the BIG plays that NFL games so often turn on. This coaching staff, top to bottom, deserves a huge share of the credit for creating schemes that allow guys to do that.
August 12th, 2021 at 6:06 am
It boils down to coaching, IMO. It’s like making a good broth. It takes the right ingredients, the right combination to bring them together, and time.
Licht has to be a good GM. A SB says so. Like most, he’s had some hits and misses, and some downright stinkers. This was a good roster before Brady arrived. I dare say he wouldn’t have come here otherwise.
August 12th, 2021 at 6:24 am
Just compare the Bucs to the Jets since 2014
August 12th, 2021 at 6:57 am
Y’all always gotta destroy a comment section with winston excuses smh. In 2019 winston had a team that could’ve made the playoffs. He blew it in a contract year get over it!!!!
August 12th, 2021 at 7:03 am
Like everyone didn’t already know this and if you didn’t you’re an idiot.
August 12th, 2021 at 7:11 am
Only one NFL gm is truly successful each year. Just saying.
August 12th, 2021 at 8:02 am
I think Licht has done a great job with the roster since Arians arrived but to say the previous coaches couldn’t develop talent is ignoring all of Licht’s terrible picks.
-Winston was our #1 pick…..he was a back up last year that Arians couldn’t develop either.
-Aguayo in the 2nd rd…..nobody has been able to develop him nor does anyone take a kicker in the 2nd rd.
-Hargreaves was a 1st rd pick….Arians couldn’t salvage him either, nor has any other coach in the league.
-Noah Spence in the same 2nd rd as Aguayo and same draft as Hargreaves. How do you miss on all three of those?
-Austin Seferian-Jenkins in the 2nd followed by Charles Sims in the 3rd
That’s a lot of missed picks in rds 1-3…..those are on Licht. He has done a great job since 2017 to now but he really whiffed on entire in his early years here.
August 12th, 2021 at 8:26 am
Licht deserves all the credit. He lured BA out of retirement and the rest is history. Just like many of his draft picks, Jason has developed into a solid GM. Huge kudos to the Glazers for sticking with him. They had every right to fire him a few years back, but instead went against the grain and kept him. Bravo Jason and team Glazer, thanks for rewarding us with football bliss.
August 12th, 2021 at 8:53 am
The one good thing to come out of Lovie Smith and Jameis Winston is Licht and showcasing of how good our players are to attract the likes of Brady. Lovie picked Licht. Jameis with his highlight reel plays ensured the world saw how talented or offense and defense are in both attack mode and damage control mode respectively.
August 12th, 2021 at 10:02 am
Licht’s successes in the draft & FA were torpedoed by ATM at QB.
August 12th, 2021 at 10:20 am
From Licht Weight to Proud Tao Be Your Bud Licht. He deserves a ton of credit hanging on for dear life career wise…landing/luring BA and signing Brady. His picks have even been gold of late in particular. Well done, Sir. Happy to see a modern day Cinderella Man story…
August 12th, 2021 at 10:26 am
You guys are amazing. This defense sucked so bad until the 2nd half of jameis last year. THATS- 4 1/2y- sucked / 1/2y decent. Jameis played amazing during that 1/2 year he had a decent defense and they won a bunch of games. Until the injuries caught up to him. He had no business being out there playing with a broken finger on his throwing hand and a torn MCL on his plant foot.
An opportunity to get Brady I get that you take it. We all love seeing the Bucs win. But this classless trashing Jameis blaming everything on him is just F-up’d and wrong. Can’t you just enjoy something without trashing someone else?
August 12th, 2021 at 10:35 am
Always winstons fault. Good to know in 2019 the bucs had a playoff kicker because as we all know kickers mean nothing. Good to know we had a playoff defense for all 16 games and not just the last 4 games in 2019. Good to know we were a playoff team that led the league in penalties. Yea that sure seems to be all winston’s fault
August 12th, 2021 at 11:01 am
The one thing I always liked about Licht is when he did make a draft mistake he owned up to it and got rid of them and found a replacement. To many times GM hold onto guys for way to long just cause they drafted them and don’t want to look bad.
August 12th, 2021 at 12:13 pm
Licht and Arians were mere mortals, until the arrival of Tom Brady.
It is Brady who makes us what we are, just like he made New England what it was.
But I will say that Licht got MUCH better with the arrival of the Arians Gang.
His drafts are much improved from what they once were, but both Wirfs and Tryon basically fell to us, and selecting Wirfs was a total no brainer.
August 12th, 2021 at 12:46 pm
Websters back from soaking his head in JW’s crotch. Wake up fool, you really are deaf, dumb and blind when it comes to all things related to Winston.
August 12th, 2021 at 1:09 pm
First list of the year that got number one right. Licht had is bad picks along the way, but he was truly torpedoed by bad coaching. Just like how the good teams have got to play complimentary football, the coaches and gm have got to compliment each other as well.
As far as Jameis, after watching him in college, I figured his floor would be someone like Eli Manning and that he was pretty much a can’t miss dude. Unfortunately, whether through horrible coaching, his own shortcomings, or both, he’s gonna be hard pressed to be the next Jeff George. He’s a bust period.
August 12th, 2021 at 3:07 pm
The dude took so much abuse on this site for years. It was unfair, but that goes with the territory and big bucks!