Welcome into Books Insider, presented by Verizon. Casey Phillips here with senior writer and editor Scott Smith.
And it's here. It's finally here.
The Draft week is upon us. We've been talking about it for months. You guys have done a bunch of mock drafts. We have all these ideas. It's just going to be such a fun week. We hope a lot of people are coming out to the draft party out here at Raymond James Stadium.
It's going to be a lot of fun. For now.
We are going to talk a little bit of draft later, but of course we have to start with the most recent news of the Buccaneers and it's just some of my favorite news in a while. And I feel like we've got to do this a few times this offseason.
The annual tradition have resigning Will Goles.
That's true.
We need to make it a holiday. We re signed him, one of the fan favorites, one of the team favorites. Tell me what comes to mind for you about not only this for him, the organization, but the defense as well.
Well.
You know this will be what his twelfth year. Very few players make it to a dozen years for a single team. And he You and I both know he's been through different coaching staws, different defenses, and he's always been willing to maybe change his frame a little bit, he gets a different role, but he always just gets the job done. He's been a great buccaneer for a long time and now there's a good chance that he'll
be a buccaneer for life, hopefully. And as it's noted here by somebody who covers the Buccaneers, he's now up there at what is at sixth place all time and games played and most bad defensive linemans, so most more than Warren Sap or Eroy Salmon. You know, that's saying something. If you can last that long, especially on one team,
you're obviously a good player. But one of the interesting things about this is it it's showing how there's a little provision in the most recent CBA how that's helping.
And it's called the four year qualifying offer. You have to have been a player, has to have been with the same team for four consecutive years without any break in there at least, and obviously Will has been more than that, and then they can you can sign them and actually pay them one point twenty five million dollars more than what it actually counts against the cap, and the whole point of that when they put that in I think they actually put it in the twenty eleven
CBA I said most recent but I think it was that one. The whole point was to try to help the veterans who weren't necessarily stars or even necessarily starters at this point, helped them still have to spot and the lee because otherwise teams would be more likely likely to go, well, we could resign Will for three million, or we could we could sign a young player at the rookie minimum, and this allows you to sign that guy and pay him but not have it hurt the cap as much.
Yeah, which is great.
I mean, he's someone who just knows the organization so much as a locker room favorite, a fan favorite, a great guy does so much in the community just and I feel like that's been so awesome to watch how clearly the team has prioritized that this offseason of guys that mean a lot to the city, to the organization that do it right on and off the field.
Yeah. Yeah, Lante, you got Mike, you got Will.
Like it just feels like the trifecta of the long tenured great guys on and off the field. So that's gonna be really wonderful to see. And I mean, he just you're right, he just gets it done that whatever you need him to do. And heck, I remember him getting that interception his last season.
Yeah, yeah, and his eleventh season in his first.
Career in he got one.
So I love this all right. And we have another signing as well. This is an offensive lineman. And of course, you know the Bucks played a game in Germany. Germany is our market, so this is a really cool signing as well. That for all of our German fans out there, we've got one. Now we have a German player, Lorenz Metz, so tell us about the signing.
So he played at the University of Cincinnati and had a little brief period with the Chicago Bears last year he didn't play. So he's from Germany around Bavaria. I believe he didn't play a down of American football till he was eighteen years old and a friend of his brought him out to practice for a pro team playing in Germany, and he was obviously good. He made the team.
He played for a while.
He got noticed by this organization that helps international prospects find places in US colleges and that's how he came over here. And so you know, that's a really late introduction to football. But he played really, really well at Cincinnati, and you know, it's interesting. He's a very big guy. You know, we'll see see if he's got a shot.
I think he's what like six ' nine, Yes, he's.
Been six y or six nine, and he does not because he was in the International Player Pathway program, he does not count against the ninety man roster. So it's just an extra spot and why not.
Yeah, that's great.
And speaking of signings, we still have a couple of big name bucks that have yet to be signed to long term deals that Antoin Winfield, Junior Tristan Wurfs.
Those are the next big things.
As amazing as it has been to watch guys like we talked about Mike and Lavonte and will get resigned, those are kind of the I'm sure next things on the to do list for Jason light And I know we got to hear from him recently. So in general, what do we feel like those deals are, Where do they stand in terms of how soon they're going to get.
Done well because of the franchise tag with Antoine and the fact that Tristan's going into his fifth year option year. Both of those guys are under contract for twenty twenty four, and that's important, and that's why while we had the rush of signings for Baker and Mike and Lante and all that these can play out out over a little
bit of time. In fact, that's basically what the franchise tag is for extending your exclusive no negotiation window, but they still don't necessarily long term deals don't have to get done, but you really don't want to go into this year with both those guys playing on one year
left on their contracts. So will they get signed. That's definitely the plan, and Jason light did say he feels good about where they are with both of those processes ongoing, and there were some reports that didn't come from the Bucks before that that said the same thing. So it seems like there's plenty of optimism that these guys will get done, and you just don't want to let players
this talented and this young out of the building. And if you look at this, Tristan was the first team APL pro by his second season, which is as fast as anybody. Michaelstane Levante did the same thing, and then Antoine by his fourth season, and he'd already been to a Pro Bowl before that. So these guys came into the league, well you remember it was the Super Bowl year, immediately started, immediately were impact players and had got just
gotten better and better. Interest In has moved to left tackle, which is even more important. And again, these guys came in the league, were immediately good, have been good every year since. And you just want them to remain Buccaneers for a long time.
Yes, absolutely, And you know, obviously Jason Lyn and his team did an incredible job evaluating those guys, and I mean they are incredible people again on and off the field, stepped in and were ready to go right away. We've gotten to hear from Jason Light recently because of leading
up to the draft. Used does his pre draft press conference, talks about their evaluation, and he said this a few different times, talking about there's you know, of course, all the physical things you watch the combine, you see the forty, you watch the tape, but there's all that other mental stuff on and off the field, and then even in a game that I've heard him say before, things about how if they miss on someone a lot of times it's more about from the neck up, is how he
describes it. But that he feels like they've really done a good job at that. And I mean, I'm sure we see it from a bunch of these guys, but but he talked a little bit about that this last week.
Well we've talked before about how they have a picture that's a silhouette of a player and it happens to be Levonte David in draft from that says, I am that man, and they are trying to find people like him, players and people like him, and he thinks, Jason thinks he and his crew have gotten a lot have really gotten good at evaluating the whole person of a prospect.
You can watch the forties and you can watch the film, and you can see how fast they run, and those things are obviously important, but it's not going to come to anything if they're not the people that you want. And he said, lots of times these days, if a guy gets in trouble in the league, a player gets in trouble, he'll go back and look at their evaluations, and lots of times, really sure enough. That was a
guy we took off our board for character reasons. So they feel like they've done a good job of homing in on the players that really fit in terms of the whole person.
Yeah, that's very true.
And you know, we're gonna have a whole road to the draft after this that we're going to be shooting as well, So it'll be the final one. Stay tuned for that, But for right now, just to talk about one other position potentially as we talk about evaluating and talent and what this team might need. In his press conference, did he address some of the positions maybe of where they might still be looking or you know, positions of need versus kind of you already have somebody.
And something that might compliment that.
And I don't think we're going to talk about this position on road to the draft because we're going to talk about the first round and it's running back and there are not a lot of evaluators out there who think there's a running back who's going to go in the first round. But Jason has said before that he does feel like this draft has depth at the running back position. Maybe not top heavy first rounders, but good depth. So maybe the Bucks take one in the second third round,
and then you think, well, we ever shot White. I mean he's only going into his third year. Yeah, he's only going into his third year. He really emerged and got better and better last year, great pass catcher, really started to come on as a runner as things went along. But then you look at look at all the snaps this guy took because he was on the field. He's a three down back. Obviously, I didn't know until I looked this up that shot actually led all running backs
in the league in offensive snaps. Now, Christian McCaffrey might have beaten him if he'd played the seventeenth game, which he didn't, But still that's saying a lot. I mean, that's what they call a belle cow back right. And it worked fine, and it could work again. But as Jason put it as if he was saying this to Rashad White, He's like, we love you. What if we had two of you, you know, we could spell you get.
Some longevity you kind of you know, insulate against injury, all those things that it's just a lot to ask of one player to take that many snaps and to be having to run and catch and block and all the things that that's going to take a toll over the.
Course of the whole season.
So I'm sure, especially just for a little bit of increased freshness, whether it's the fourth quarter or the last quarter of the season, that might be handling.
Yeah, even in one game or the long view, So it's not out of the question that the Buccaneers would add to that position.
All right.
Well, again, like we said, we have another road to the draft. We're going to be shooting, so if you have more questions about that, this will be our final one. And again we hope to see you at the draft party or at least watching all of our draft coverage this week on buccaneers dot com.