Young Core Defense Is Flush With Youth

To build a team through the draft means to build a nucleus of young players and allow them to mature and gain experience through rotation during the season.  You need to find youth which is talented enough to get into a positional rotation or youth which can develop on the coverage teams and find it's way into the rotation later.

Knowing this, it makes sense to find draft needs by looking at the young core of players instead of the current starting lineup.  If the starting lineup has a need, free agency is probably the right place to look since experience is needed immediately.  In the case of the 2010 Tampa Bay Buccaneers young players need more experience (i.e. the rebuilding process means creating depth across the board).  The status of the rebuilding process can also be measured by looking at the young core.

To build this chart of the Young Core Defense, I took the most recent Buccaneers team depth chart and roster (both of which have been a moving target all year) and placed all the defensive players with four years of experience or less (because the average NFL player has a 3.5 year career).  I ignored players on the practice squad as they are under a less-binding contract structure.  This provides a glimpse of the "core" of the defense (players listed in order of years of NFL experience)

LCB  Talib, Aqib (3); Biggers, E.J. (2); Johnson, DJ (2)

LDE  White, Stylez (4); Bennett, Michael (2); Gilbeaux, Brandon (0)

2DT  Miller, Roy (2); Price, Brian (0)

3DT  Okam, Frank (3); McCoy, Gerald (0); Woods, Al (0)

WLB  Hayes, Geno (3); McKenzie, Tyrone (2)

MLB  Hayward, Adam (4)

SLB  Black, Quincy (4); Watson, Dekoda (0)

RDE  Crowder, Tim (4); Moore, Kyle (2); Magee, Alex (2); Johnson, George (0)

RCB  Mack, Elbert (3); Lewis, Myron (0)

SS  Harris, Dominique (0); Asante, Larry (0)

FS  Jackson, Tanard (4); Lynch, Corey (3); Grimm, Cody (0)

K  Barth, Connor(3)

The constant influx of young players to this side of the ball in 2010 has created a very healthy looking chart for the offseason.

We'll use this information for our analysis leading up to the 2011 NFL Draft.

Injured Reserve Brimming With Talent

With just two weeks remaining in the 2010 season, the Buccaneers have amassed one-fourth of a regular season roster on their Injured Reserve.  The 13 players on the Injured Reserve list are:

50	Alston, Jon	LB	RES	6'0"	235	6/4/1983	5	Stanford
58	Black, Quincy	OLB	RES	6'2"	240	2/28/1984	4	New Mexico
69	Dotson, Demar	T	RES	6'9"	315	10/11/1985	2	Southern Mississippi
52	Faine, Jeff	C	RES	6'3"	291	4/6/1981	8	Notre Dame
72	Gilbeaux, Brandon	DE	RES	6'3"	270	6/9/1987	0	Delaware
35	Grimm, Cody	FS	RES	6'1"	203	2/26/1987	0	Virginia Tech
32	Huggins, Kareem	RB	RES	5'9"	198	5/24/1986	1	Hofstra
75	Joseph, Davin	G	RES	6'3"	313	11/22/1983	5	Oklahoma
93	McCoy, Gerald	DT	RES	6'4"	295	2/25/1988	0	Oklahoma
94	Moore, Kyle	DE	RES	6'5"	272	10/25/1986	2	USC
92	Price, Brian	DT	RES	6'1"	303	4/10/1989	0	UCLA
25	Talib, Aqib	CB	RES	6'1"	205	2/13/1986	3	Kansas
36	Jackson, Tanard	FS	SUS	6'0"	200	7/21/1985	4	Syracuse

Black, Faine, Joseph, McCoy, Moore, Talib, and Jackson were opening day starters.  Grimm replaced Jackson when he was suspended by the NFL.  Huggins had started getting carries when he was injured versus New Orleans.  Price had started to earn more snaps on defense.  Alston, Dotson, and Gilbeaux went on IR before the first snap of 2010.

These 13 will be added to the end of season 53-man roster along with the 8 men on the practice squad resulting in 74 players on the offseason roster.  This means there will be only 6 open spots remaining on the offseason 80-man roster -- and a complete slate of 7 men coming in the 2011 draft.

It will be another interesting offseason!

Draft Class Rankings: Buccaneer Games Played

When thinking about how to rank the Buccaneer Drafts, one of the first measures which came to mind was how each contributed to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.  Not just by being drafted nor by making the roster; the player can only have an impact on the franchise by being on the field on game day.

To that end, I have constructed the following graph of the total number of games played as a Buccaneer for all players in the specified draft class:

Clearly, the 1987 Draft Class and the 1997 Draft Class made big contributions to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on game days and are far and away the two most significant draft classes by this measure (raw data will be posted in the near future when I'm done playing with it).  A clear cut winner cannot be established yet as 1997 Draftee Ronde Barber has not completed his career.

On the flip side, the 1989 Draft Class and the 2002 Draft Class have to be considered (as entire classes) to be major underperformers.  It's too early to make the call on the 2008 - 2010 drafts as many of those players are still on the roster.

The two "low point" marks on the graph appear to (in general) divide the classes as well as the fortunes of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers into three significant parts.  The pre-1988 era was one of inconsistency and mixed results on the field.  The 1990-2001 era which ended with a SuperBowl shows a generally larger per-class contribution, and the post 2002 era which we are in now.

We'll be keeping our eyes on these trends and look for others as we continue to break down the Tampa Bay Buccaneers draft fortunes!