Evaluating Bucs Free Agency Moves, Potential Draft Trades | Bucs Insider

the news from this week. Ross Cockerell, quarterback was re signed, and I wanted to hear your thoughts on on the contributions we saw from him. He's he's a guy that isn't necessarily one of the most recognizable names on the team, but ended up playing a pretty big role last season. Yeah, I think it was very telling. At the end of the year, without even being prompted, um Jason Light, I

think this is around the beginning of the playoffs. Jason Light was just talking about how the season went and acquiring players along the way, and he said Ross Cockrell was one of the best pickups they made all year, and it was really kind of an under the radar thing beginning of September, just that we put him on that you know, that expanded practice squad, and at the time we had rookie Parnell Motley on the active roster, and after a couple of weeks, I think it just

became mobby obvious to on the practice on the practice field that Cockroll was should be playing, so they kind of switched those two and then Parnel Motley ended up getting side elsewhere, but Russ Cockroll stayed on the roster the rest of the way, and while there were times where he didn't play for a bunch of games in a row, when he was needed, he stepped in very well. He played well in the slot, he played a little bit on the outside as well, and ended up through

the playoffs getting almost three hundred snaps on defense. And when he was out there, you know, the defense didn't suffer. When guys like Carlton Davis was missing a little bit of time, the defense didn't suffer. And I think the thing they really liked about him was he really grasped the defense well and was generally where he was supposed to be when he was supposed to be there. So, you know, I think that's the first thing in coaches look for is do they understand our assignments and are

they in the right place. Yeah, that's every coach's dream, right, not having to yell and scream at the guys to be in the starting point at least for yes. Okay, we had a question from Logan saying, do you think Giovanni Bernard is going to be a good veteran half back to help Lenny and Roe Joe developed to be

even better. So we know that there has not been official news about Giovanni Bernard, but there is a press conference with him happening uh this afternoon, So I thought that is that we can we can chat about this question here. Yeah, I would think so. I would think at this point, Buck fans, uh can see the pattern there. You know, the Buccaneers as a team, and that includes are us as an arm of the team doing officially

announcing thing until the paper is signed. So you're generally going to see the news before it's officially announced by

the team. But the fact that they've scheduled a zoom call with him for two thirty afternoon too, thirty in the afternoon today is pretty good sign that that is A. A. That's a good and correct report that the Buccaneers are signing running back Jovanni Bernard, who spend his first eight seasons with the Cincinnati Bengals, And um, you know, first of all, if you just look at it as a one for one, Lashawn McCoy is not been resigned, Giovanni

Bernard now basically takes that spot. And the Bucks didn't end up needing a lot from Lashan mcoy last year, as it turned out, because Ron Jones was very good throughout the offseason, I mean the regular season, and Leonard Fournett stopped up in a big way and a few times they used Keishaw Vaughn, So that fourth running back

last year wasn't needed. You can't count on that always happening, though they may need him more or they may want to carve out a little bit of a role for their fourth guy because he was active on some occasions, so on most occasions, I would say, So, you know, the best thing about Giovanni Bernard that I would say is that he's he's been a very good pass catcher throughout his career, and that wasn't something that was a real big strength of the Buccaneers backfield last year, Leonard

Fournette had some good moments there. Ron Jones really didn't get involved in the passing game very much. We still don't know about Keishaw Vaughan of them that great touchdown catches that he made. But um, I think right there you could see that Bernard might have a chance to be a little bit more involved than our fourth running back was last year. And and certainly there's plenty of time to figure that out. Okay. Jermaine asked, do you see us picking up any more free agents before the

draft or the season? Yeah, before the Bernard signing. I've been seeing that question a little bit in mailbags and so on, and I did think there we're going to be one or two. I think what you'd call value signings. And I don't mean that to be derogatory to the players at all. It's just that you get to this point in free agency and there's so still some useful players out there, but they're not going to command big contracts, and that's probably that's reportedly the case with Jovanni Bernard.

It's a value signing for the Buccaneers. So I could see one or two more of those but there's really not a lot of room for it. You know, we brought everybody back. We're gonna be adding six or seven draft picks and some undrafted free agis after that. But I mean, you look at any season and there are signings that happened along the way. Um, you know, just like last year Leonard Fournett, you know, guys that came

on a little bit late. Um, it's so yeah, I could see it happening, but it's pretty hard to predict who that would be. And then of course we've had about a thousand people asking about Antonio Brown and the status of that, the likelihood of him being resigned, and and the implications either way for the team. Well, I guess I I guess I'd piggyback on what I just said about this being the time of free agency when you're talking about value signings, and that may be what

we have here. And and I don't want to speak for Jason Light or any of our people doing their contracts. This is just theoretical speculation, not telling you what's happening. But um, if you're at the stage and freegency where you're talking about guys signing kind of value contracts, it maybe that that's what the team is hoping for and that's what they see as the right thing to do, Um,

And maybe the player doesn't agree with that. You know what I'm saying, he's still looking for a certain number, and the Buccaneers have a certain number and they're just not meeting in the middle at the moment um. I know that Jason light has said there have been some offers made, so it's obviously I would assume that means it's not what he's looking for at this point. But we're just gonna have to see in the end who who has the right not the right position, but who

ends up having the correct position. But you know, is is he a player that's going to sign for this much or is he a player that some team is going to give this much? And I've sure he you know, he'd like to find out if that ladder is true, right for sure? UM. Mike asked a very interesting question. He said, with the seventeen game season, do you think the league might expand roster size or at least let

a couple more players dress on game day? And I think we talked about some of these different rules because of COVID that happened with like the I R and you know all of us of it. Now, do you see some of the same things that were done to help with COVID maybe implemented because of the seventeen game season. Yeah, I've been very interested to see what the final ruling and all those rules are, how many of them they keep.

I know, the teams, the coaches really like them, and that would actually basically serve the purpose of what this question is asking. You know, because we did essentially have severaltra or extra roster spots last year. Just having a sixteen man practice squad pretty much took care of that issue. I mean, if you look at the comings and goings on the on the roster last year compared to previous years,

there were a lot fewer guys coming and going. You know, you had a couple of guys a Q Shippling and and uh in Antonio Brown and so on, but you didn't have a lot of the roster tire and usually see because you had sixteen guys in your practice squad, so you had sixty nine guys essentially every week to choose from. Because you could elevate two of those guys

if you wanted to every week. So just having all those and the ability to move them up down, and the ability to move up and down from I r UM after just three weeks with anybody you wanted to. That gave you basically the flexibility that you needed to get through COVID and would do the same thing for a seventeen game season. And I'm certainly not one to

downplay the significance of that. I think it's a big deal to add a seventeenth game, and but it is just one more game we're talking about, and I think getting through the COVID situation last year was probably more difficult than one more game. So same rules would probably

help quite a bit. Right. Of course, we've had people ask us if the retired Julian Edelman would be contemplating coming to the Buccaneers, which I mean, you know, to people's credit, you know, Bruce arians was retired, Gronk was retired. There's a pattern here of was thinking that, you know, hey, the Buccaneers may be worth coming out of retirement, especially if they maybe some of these guys with the Patriots.

I understand why everybody's asking that, but I want to hear your thoughts on what you think the odds would be of Edelman becoming a Buccaneer. Yeah, I mean it's obvious to connect the dots there. That was happening before he retired. Um and uh, I can see the logic in it. And after last year, I don't want to discount any of those kind of theories, you know. I mean, at one point the idea of Gronkowski coming out of retirement and joining us seemed like, okay, sure whatever, and

then that happens and Leonard Fournette cut gets cut? Should we learned Fornett? I don't know if we really need it then that happens, so certainly we don't want to discount any of it. One thing to point out is the Buck's best slot receiver is Chris Godwin, And I don't know if you really if slot receivers the number one thing the Buccaneers need to add at the moment. The one player that they haven't had back from last

year was Antonio Brown, who was more of an outside guy. Um, So I don't know if the but then again, who knows what the situation is gonna be like in November or December, you know, maybe knock on wood hopefully not. But there could be injuries or other developments that that make it, you know, make it more platypal to do that. But at the moment, it doesn't seem like the perfect fit. But if you know, if Tom Brady wants him, it's hard to say no. Apparently it is very hard to

say no to the Crady. That is true, okay, um. I thought this was an interesting question. Richard asked, Uh, since we don't have any glaring needs to the draft, would it be better to trade out of the first round since we're basically drafting for depth and special teams? So do you agree with that sentiment and in terms of what we are looking for in the draft, and then the trading down would be the best way to

do it. Yes, I agree with that sentiment. I don't know that will necessarily happen because it takes two to tango. You've got to have somebody that really wants to move up um at that moment. But I think that Jason light will definitely be keeping his ears open for that

type of opportunity. Absolutely. If you know, the one negative to trading down from from thirty two is that if you trade down for thirty two year, you're necessarily trading out of the first round, and if you take a player in the first round, you get that useful fifth year option on his four year contract, and that's only for first rounders, so you lose that on whichever player you take. So if you were if you were saying, should we move down two or three spots might not

be worth it. You could probably get the same guy three spots later, but then you don't have that fifth year option. But if you're talking more like you get to the end of round thirty two and there's seven or eight guys that you like and you can trade down ten or twelve spots, I think it makes a ton of sense. On the other hand, and we'll probably talk about this a little bit in our road to the draft this week. The Bucks, the fact that the Bucks don't have a lot of glaring needs. Look at

it another way. If you have I think we have seven draft picks. If you have seven drafts or maybe eight eight draft picks, um are do you have room on your rest for eight guys to make the team? Do you really need to take eight guys? So you can look at it either way and say we don't really need to add more assets and maybe you could use some of that to trade up a little bit if there's a guy that you like. But to get back to the original question, I'm a big fan in

this situation of trading down a little bit. Yes, okay, uh, And we'll close with this. Anthony said, what do you see happening with O. J. Howard this year? Well, I just what I hope to see is him get a little better luck in terms of injuries. I don't think that this is a situation of a player being injury prone. They all seem pretty flukey to me, particularly the first two ankle injuries. I mean, an ankle injury is like, Okay, you stepped a wrong in turns to hell, right. I mean,

I don't know. The Achilles one is maybe a little bit different. But I'm just I don't have seen any reason why he should we should worry about him more than any other player getting hurt. So let's say he has better injury fortune this year. I think you're gonna see a very productive player and a lot of good use in two tight end sets with Rob Gronkowski, and we were seeing that in the first four games last year.

He was off to a really nice start, looked really good before his injury, and Bruce arians was talking about him the other day and just said, the sky's the limit. I mean, remember, this is a guy that Bucks were absolutely thrilled felled the nineteen to them. Nobody expected, uh, they thought he might be a top ten pick in the draft that year. And I mean that's because he's

he's got he's so talented, you know. I mean, he's just he's huge and fast and talented and you can get down the seams, he can make catches over guys. I think that there's a ton of potential for him to have a big season if he just gets that better injury fortune. Okay, well that's gonna do it for us. On this edition of Buccaneers Inside are Live presented by Miller w Lite And again, like Scott said, we're going

to be shooting a road to the draft. So if you want even more draft coverage, make sure you check that out and we'll see you next week.