Welcome into Road to the Draft. Casey Phillips here with senior writer and editor Scott Smith. This is where we talk about all the news that's happening in the buccaneer world and how it might affect what they do in the draft. We are almost to April now, it's right around the corner. It always feels like this is about the time where maybe some of the mock drafts start to coalesce a little bit. People start to get kind of these common themes for different teams, whereas at the
beginning it's kind of all over the place. So more free agency has happened, we have a lot more evidence and information. So last weekend we talked a lot about some of the lesser likely things to happen. Do you feel like you're starting to get a sense of what people view is the more likely scenario? And part of that involves the inevitable rise of certain positions. So quarterbacks tend to rise. Offensive tackles, they tend to rise as
you get closer. And by rise, I mean if you look at a mock draft, you see them lower one week and then higher the next week. Are they really changing on the boards of teams? Probably not a lot, but just people are getting either better ideas that everybody agrees with or the getting information. And I'll start with one that came from a guy who's pretty plugged in,
Daniel Jeremiah. He's got good sources in the NFL. So a lot of mock drafts you see out there are people basically doing the logical thing, Okay, this team needs a quarterback, who's the best quarterback available. Some of these guys, though, they can maybe get some bits of information, and so you look at their drafts a little bit more like maybe they know something. And Janel Jeremiah of NFL dot Com recently put out his I think it's his first
mock draft, and it's an unusual pick. I've seen it a few times, but he had Will Levis, the Kentucky quarterback, falling all the way to the Buccaneers and US taking him at nineteen. Will will Levis last till nineteen, not on most mock drafts, But it's possible, you know what I'm saying. So what you have to think about is would the Buccaneers even consider taking a quarterback at nineteen?
And I honestly think you can't write off the possibility because you have Baker Mayfield on a one year contract and you have Cole Chess who you really don't know how it's going to go yet, And are either of them going to be the quarterback of the future. I'm sure of them are going to try to be, and you know hopefully that is the case, right, but you don't know that for sure, And if you have a
chance to add another candidate there, maybe you do it. Yeah, I don't think it's out of the out of the question. I don't think quarterback is the Buck's number one goal going into this draft in the first round, but I don't think it's out of the question. Yeah, Which, what would you say? So outside of that one, what are some of the ones that do feel like maybe a more traditional look based on what the Bucks probably more like and more likely might you see the offensive tackles?
As I mentioned all this time, it looks like if the Buckner state at nineteen, that Northwesterns Peter Scrownski and ohiouse States Paris Johnson and probably George's Roderick Jones will be out of our reach by then. And so that's why, and we've talked about in previous weeks. You see a guy like Darnell Wright of Tennessee going to US a lot at nineteen. But all of a sudden, now Darnell Right's rising too because he you know, he's a good prospect. He could step right in and be right tackle, and
there's a lot of teams that could use that. So now I start seeing him go before nineteen. So who's next on that list? For most people, it's Oklahoma's Anton Harrison, who is very technically sound guy. He's probably not quite as like strong as some of these guys that would go before him, but he's very technically sound. He does the right thing all the time. He could seven right away and be a left tackle for you or a right tackle depending on what you want to do with
Tristan Worth. So you see a lot of that. I know that. In our Insider this week, we talked about the dB position of knowing you've lost. You know you've already lost Mike Edwards, you've lost on Murphy Bunting. You do have your outside corners back, but just in general, do you feel like dB? And I know you always love to talk about that you can never have enough corners.
I don't know if safety always applies as much in your mind, but just the dB position overall, do you feel like that's one where based on the whole need versus strength of the draft, is that one that could end up lining up well for the Bucks. Yeah. Absolutely, And if you look at it just recent years, Jason Light and company did such a good job, like in the second and third round, drafting one dB after another, multiple ones in the same year. They all stuck around,
and we're starters for four years. Some of them you're able to resign. Some of them, like Mike Edwards and Sean Murphy Bunting, you are not. And so it's at some point it becomes time to reload. There. And a guy that we've talked about before but I wanted to mention again because he's all of a sudden really popular for the Buccaneers at number nineteen is Alabama's safety Brian Branch.
And we were talking about this earlier today that the Buccaneers and Todd Bowles was asked about this yesterday at the owner's meetings. Clearly with Carlton Davis and Jamal Dean. The Buccaneers have their outside corners in place for a few years, but who's going to play the slot with Anton Woodfield now focusing on free safety. Alabama's Brian branch is really a lot a lot of scouts like him because he's very versatile. You can put him at back there at safety, but you could also play him in
the slot. So the Buccaneers don't necessarily have a frontline candidate for that slot position right now. If you could add one through the draft in the first round, plus a guy that could played a couple of different positions for you, it could be pretty good value. Well, and in those highlights, we just saw him being a return guy. Yeah, that would be bad either, that would be I was
just thinking. I was like, man, this wasn't something we plan on talking about, but that is something that I feel like isn't set necessarily for the Bucks this year. Devin Tompkins finished the season, but is he one for sure? Yeah? Yeah, So if and add that, that's a whole other reason to draft him. All right, Well, that's going to do it for us. On this edition of Road to the Draft again, We'll be doing these all the way up
until the draft based on everything going on. So come back for another Road to the Draft next time.