Steal
April 23rd, 2016
Robbery of a pick.
Yes, we are five days from the NFL draft. Hard to believe. Before you fully recover from your weekend partying, the draft will be here.
So in sort of a way to celebrate the draft, Steve Muench and Kevin Weidl of BSPN identified each NFL team’s greatest steals in recent years. And for the Bucs, it is not that difficult to figure out.
That would be outside linebacker Lavonte David.
Nebraska OLB Lavonte David: 2012 second round (58th overall)
Former GM Mark Dominik found great value with David, who has set the recent trend of undersized “space” linebackers in the league. Despite his lack of measurables, David has been productive and durable, appearing and starting in 62 of 64 games through his first four seasons, while also earning All-Pro honors (2013) and being selected to his first Pro Bowl last season.
And to think if the Bucs were only halfway decent, David wouldn’t be the best-kept secret in the NFL, or punished so harshly for his opening-day mistake under the bright lights of Gotham back in 2013. Because the Bucs have been such a lousy team since he was drafted, David has hardly gotten the proper recognition.
Joe hopes after finally making the Pro Bowl this past winter, those days are ending.
Damn that former Bucs rock star general manager Mark Dominik!
April 23rd, 2016 at 9:17 am
I don’t think he is any kind of secret to anyone really. They all know how good he is, but with losing comes the fact of others looking for the next hot shot. Do agree that we need to win.
April 23rd, 2016 at 9:18 am
Ryan Grigson drafted Andrew Luck.
Matt Millen drafted Calvin Johnson.
Mike Tennenbaum drafted Darrelle Revis
Public sentiment is all wrong about them. Clearly.
Fun game, Joe!
April 23rd, 2016 at 9:21 am
So yea, as a guy who doesn’t care for college sports…mortgage the farm. Get Myles Jack and Rankins. Run a base 3-4 adding some 4-3 for confusion.
Lol you can laugh. Again…I don’t care who plays or coaches our beloved BUCS, C’MON man, I just wanna win
From what i read, alot you all are funny, love JBF!
RANKINS
SPENCE
JOSEPH
WR
OL in that order
#BUCUTALKINBOUT
YO JOE!
GO BUCS!!!
April 23rd, 2016 at 9:21 am
Dom’s best draft…but we ended up taking and trading, Barron. Most of the other draft pivks have not panned out through the years.
April 23rd, 2016 at 9:39 am
Everyone knows the draft isn’t an exact science….
I say eliminate the combine and just let teams draft based off of game films and then also off of league and team tryouts.
Imagine how the NFL would be then…..it would definitely be more exciting.
April 23rd, 2016 at 9:49 am
Wow am I missing something here. Love LVD and agree he was a great pick for a 2nd rounder…but out biggest steal?
Perhaps I read the article to quickly but hello….Kwon Alexander in the freaking fourth round is the STEAL!!!
Thomas Bassinger has a great article in the St. Pete…er Tampa Bay Times this morning on our drafts and failures and has some super analysis.
Bottom line is that we traded 2 FIRST ROUND AND 2 SECOND ROUND
selections for Chucky. Yep we got a Super Bowl out of it…if you believe Chucky was the ONLY coach who could have taken that team all the way.
Chucky himself has said it was a mistake to give up two firsts and two seconds and how it hampered him,
And so that set our draft waaaay back…four shots at success gone.
Then we had all the turnover at the top..leading to inconsistent drafting.
Hopefully we have finally turned that corner and are back on track. The drafting of #3 practically insures that because when you read Bassenger’s piece if #3 keeps up his pace he will have the most approximate value of any Buc drafted in the past decade.
April 23rd, 2016 at 10:30 am
Love and W–
It’s not easy picking the draft. It’s a crisp shoot. Half these 1st rounders will be flops.
But…… Millen was horrible. Yes he drafted Calvin Johnson but that’s because he drafted every WR he looked at in the first round for a few years and HAD to hit on someone!!! 😄
April 23rd, 2016 at 10:51 am
He hasn’t done enough to earn props. I like David, but his inclusion in the Probowl was luck.
Not that the Pro Bowl matters.
He really hasn’t done much. I believe he is one of our better players, but I have yet to see him become the elite LB we all know he can be.
April 23rd, 2016 at 10:51 am
Props when props are earned.
April 23rd, 2016 at 11:12 am
I’ve yet to see a frame by frame breakdown and timing of David’s push out of bounds in that Jet game that was stolen from our Bucs. Victory snatched away by NY mafia refs. A broken record, no a badly scratched one.
April 23rd, 2016 at 11:21 am
That wasnt a mistake …it was b.s. i have seen those exact same actions by more players I can count on both hands since then and none have been flagged. We would have won that game had it not been for that call. I remwmber that clear as day. Officiating is way to inconsistent
April 23rd, 2016 at 11:28 am
^^ Yup. And we’re always on the losing end of it.
April 23rd, 2016 at 11:34 am
Joe never misses an opportunity to profess his undying Love for Dom.
Dude drafted exactly 3 A Grade players in 5 years and one of those picks my grandmother would have made (McCoy).
Yet he completely wasted 7 premium top 50 picks in 5 years (Freeman, Price, Benn, Clayborn, Bowers, Barron and the #13 overall traded for Revis’ overpaid rehab year). That’s a lot of misses with high picks. A 3rd for Myron Lewis – two 4ths for Luke Stocker… CMon Joe – the evidence that Dom was a bad GM is overwhelming. The overall record during his tenure speaks for itself – as does the fact that DOM hasn’t received a job offer working for any other NFL team since being fired 3 years ago…
LaVonte David WAS a good pick though and I’m glad we have him and resigned him.
April 23rd, 2016 at 11:58 am
@Joe
Dominik would never have even heard of LD’s NAME if it wasn’t for Schiano who wanted to draft him…DAM that reality.
April 23rd, 2016 at 12:24 pm
Kwon in the 4th will end up being wayyyyy more of a steal than LVD in the 2nd, I’m sure. (I see multiple DPOY’s in Kwon’s future)
April 23rd, 2016 at 12:35 pm
When it comes to Dominik Joe is like that person who tells you the same story over and over again because they either don’t remember they told you the first 50 times or they just really don’t have any other interesting to say.
Yes Joe, we’ve heard of the great trilogy of David-McCoy-Martin, the only 3 players to make a longstanding meaningful impact for the franchise in the five drafts and 35 or so selections Dumbinik made in his reign of error. Please tell us again about those three players because I’m not quite sure I heard about them the first 50 times.
April 23rd, 2016 at 1:21 pm
I hope, at some point in the draft, the Bucs select Jaylon Smith, the former Notre Dame linebacker and give him all of 2016 to heal. He would be an outstanding addition to the lockerroom and linebacker corps. His knee and nerve damage will need a full year to heal.
April 23rd, 2016 at 1:52 pm
Davis is just like Winston. He still got a whole lot to prove. A couple decent seasons on a losing team is just that. He’s not a pro bowler yet. But neither is Winston. Build a legacy. Win some games. Get to the playoffs. Win..a championship. That’s what real Buc fans want. We..want to win..by any means necessary!
April 23rd, 2016 at 2:19 pm
Bill, Jaylon Smith was a great backer for ND, emphasis on was. Orthapedics have come a long way with ACL tears but when you get to nerve injuries or meniscus tears etc it can still spell the end of a player’s career even in 2016.
Recent examples would be Ifo Ekpre-Olomu who was a potential 1st round pick out of Oregon last year who fell to Rd 7 and has already been released by the Browns after his knee injury. Or Marcus Lattimore who never played a down for the 49ers after being a 4th round selection of the 49ers.
Smith will likely be a later round pick unfortunately, and while I hope he recovers fully like some of his optimistic doctors are saying, I wouldn’t bet a lot on it.
April 23rd, 2016 at 3:26 pm
Do the research and you’ll see that Dominik drafted 3 1st team all pros from 2010-2015. Nevermind that he didn’t draft on 2014 or 2015. Those three players is 4th best in the entire league with 4 all pros being the most tied by three teams. Add in that he traded for Revis whose been all pro and facts show that my boy Dominik was the top in the league finding all pros. Just let that simmer on you for a little. Pro bowls are nothing, all pros are everything.
April 23rd, 2016 at 5:09 pm
Why is it that you people insult Joe for giving Dominick some credit?
Dominick made his share of mistakes, yes…but he also had his up sides. Trade negotiations, contract negotiations, salary cap management. He was a master at those things.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t very good at the other important things…but that doesn’t mean he was all bad.
Jason Licht is good at drafting…a huge plus…but he SUCKS at Free Agency. We won’t know how he is at cap management for another year or three, but we know he SUCKS at trade negotiations.
All GMs have their pluses and minuses. Hating so hard on them is stupid.
I don’t hate Jason Licht, for example. I just refuse to give him props that he doesn’t earn, and I refuse to let him avoid sharing the blame for mistakes. Most people treat him like the teflon GM here.
Licht is as responsible for recent screw ups as Lovie was. Yet NO ONE held him accountable.
The biggest difference though, between he and Lovie was that Lovie had experience as a head coach, while Licht had never been a GM. So in that respect, Jason Licht is permitted some mistakes as he learns on the job.
But that doesn’t mean he should not be held accountable for them.
As I said, Mark Dominick wasn’t great at his job…but he DID have strong points that Jason does not. No GM is going to be perfect. I currently prefer Jason Licht over Mark Dominick though, simply because he’s better at drafting (or so we think…really we don’t know for sure if it was Lovie who made those picks or not…this draft will clarify that).
April 23rd, 2016 at 6:46 pm
You are correct Tom S. However, there are some special players that I really pull for and Jaylon is one of them. To get hurt like that, in a post-season game, makes it even worse.
April 23rd, 2016 at 7:00 pm
3 good picks in 5 drafts doesn’t make him a good gm
Dude was awful
April 23rd, 2016 at 7:26 pm
@BucBonzai
Love your posts even when I disagree. You always bring logic and frequently plenty of facts to back up your points.
Alas as far as who gets credit/blame for drafting/FA’s I don’t think that is yet truly public information that anybody can really know.
Lovie had roster control written into his contract. He hired Licht which made Licht beholden to and junior in influence to Lovie.
Just from gossip and rumors one gets the feeling that Lovie handled FA and Licht the draft. It seemed Lovie was more interested in NFL players than college players and there is nothing wrong with that…if he hadn’t picked the wrong NFL players.
I’m not sure Joe or any of us will ever know who SHOULD get the blame/credit for the Bucs moves of the past two years.
April 23rd, 2016 at 9:06 pm
Ah and let us not forget who he drafted that first rd… And who (at LB) he passed up on.
April 23rd, 2016 at 9:31 pm
LVD doesn’t get recognition because he isnt a loud mouth jerk. Guys like sherman, Norman, suggs, OBJ, etc crave the attention and are on teams with more media exposure. If LVD was a trash talker and club hopper, he would probably be more well known.
No one knew who Norman was until he threw a punch at Cam in training camp.
April 23rd, 2016 at 9:51 pm
E! SPN don’t know about him. NFL network doesnt talk about him.
April 23rd, 2016 at 10:14 pm
StPeteBucsFan Says:
“…I don’t think that is yet truly public information that anybody can really know…
…Lovie had roster control written into his contract. He hired Licht which made Licht beholden to and junior in influence to Lovie.”
Really, when you think about it, how do we really know Lovie had full roster control? The media used “unnamed” inside sources to report that, and then the national media played off of those initial reports.
To give such claims credence, wouldn’t we have to believe that local and national media would “never” use “unnamed” sources as a lie to support their claims?
Example…Rick Stroud (or whichever of the local hacks) writes/says “My inside sources with the Bucs tell me Lovie Smith has complete roster control.”
Mike Flurio reports on that AND interviews Stroud (who is glad his claim got him noticed) and then the rest of the media reports off of that, with various reporters and such saying “inside sources”…which is really “I saw Rick Stroud say “inside sources”.
We’ve seen local guys lie many times each year. In fact, the only one I really trust it the one who presents at the hall of fame.
April 24th, 2016 at 1:29 am
BuccaneerBonzai:
Lovie had full control of the roster. Period. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have taken the job.
April 24th, 2016 at 8:23 am
@Bonzai
-“He hast done enough to earn props.” “His pro Bowl was pure luck”
Only one of two NFL players to record 100 tackles 5 sacks and 5 ints.
And only player since 2012 To have 10 sacks and 6 ints.
Not to mention all the TFL’s he’s recorded.
2013 first team all pro
-that’s not luck my friend, that’s skill. and if that doesn’t deserve props I don’t know what does.
You gotta be the biggest anti BUC fan I’ve seen on this website. You sure your not a panthers or falcons fan?
April 24th, 2016 at 3:43 pm
of all the players on Dominicks 2013 roster I looked at who I would have kept
3 building block players in block in Martin,McCoy,and David.
1 building block player that St Louis payed big bucks to. Mark Barron.
5 good starters in Donald Penn,Jeremy Zutah,William Gholston, Jonathan banks and Vincent Jackson.
Mike Glennon,Akeem Spence and shepard and Tandy for their work on special teams.
The loss of Penn and Zutah set this teams offense back.Neither QB was effective and there were no holes for Martin. Licht and Lovie both messed up here.
AS for mark Barron the Rams proved he wasn’t a bust believe he had 118 tackles
last year.(solo+assists).
April 25th, 2016 at 6:49 pm
Hogwash Joe! How do you know for certainty Lovie had full control of the roster? I don’t believe that nonsense. The Bucs drafted offensively for 2 straight yrs under Lovie. And Lovie does not know how to draft offensively. Yes, he wanted Winston. That’s about it. Mr. Benedict Arnold himself..Licht probably had full control. That’s just a smokescreen the Glazers and Licht put out to further castigate Lovie. Licht is fully running the show under the guidance of Joel Glazer! Koetter now though will have more control than Lovie did.