Welcome to Bucks Insider, presented by Verizon. Casey Phillips here with senior writer and editor Scott Smith continuing our off season coverage of the Bucks. And there's just never a boring week. The NFL has managed to be relevant all year round and even right now in this offseason with a bunch of different changes. As much as we kind of hated to lose coaches, it's definitely kept things interesting for a little while and kept us with some news
headlines to get to. And I know that we have officially some new coaches that we've brought on that we can announce.
In fact, they I think we just like a minute ago, officially announced it. You've probably seen some of the names out there, but this pretty much fills out the rest of the offensive staff. It wasn't a one for one replacement some positions, like we don't have a run game coordinator like we.
Had last year.
So the hires today are wide receiver coach Brian mcclindon, who comes to us from Georgia where you just helped coach up Ladin McConkey.
You might go in the first round.
Obviously Georgia did very well, so any connection he has to that is good. From the Dolphins, we hired Josh Grizzard to be pass game coordinator. That's a position that we didn't have last year, so that's new. And then from Liam who've worked with Liam Cohen at the University of Kentucky, Brian Pacucci is the new assistant offensive line coach, which was not a position we had last year. So there's been a little bit mixing around of the actual positions.
But I think they're to the point now where they've finished filling out.
The staff and great for before combine, before free agency, before draft, kind of know how everybody feels, getting all the coaches, all the staff know what they're looking for. I'm sure that helps with all everybody being on the same page as you go into some h moment.
I think the biggest part of that is you have a new offensive coordinator and you want to get that staff felt as quickly as possible so they can start working because he has to translate his offense to them so that they can then teach it to the players. And that's that's starting now. Like they're not waiting. In fact, I'm not sure that the offensive guys are even going to go to the combine because it's more important to them to get work get to work on installing the system.
And you brought up a wide receiver coach. We've talked about pass game coordinator, and this is an interesting thing this time. I mean a we still don't know a lot about what's going to happen in free agency, but as of what the wide receiver room has looked like in recent years, these are people that have some fun weapons to play with and have just put up numbers that are so incredible in recent years.
Yeah, Brian McClinton has a nice coaching track record, but this is his first hop to the NFL, I believe and he inherits now you brought up the point it's not sure yet. The Bucks, I'm sure, are hoping to resign Mike Evans. We'd all love for Mike Evans to be a Buccaneer for life. And obviously he is still a fantastic player. And if you walk in to your first NFL room as a wide receivers coach and it's Mike Evans and Chris Godwin and some others too, but
especially those two. Wow, I mean, between the two of them, in the last five years, they've They've put up nine thousand yard seasons, which is.
About as good as you could possibly do.
Incredible.
Ten would be the most she could do between two players, and that's the most no matter how many players are involved. That's the most thousand yard seasons by individuals on a team in the last five years.
Amazing. And as we talk about this in all the things we don't know about free agency, one of the things happening in this time of year is the franchise tag windows. So explain the timeline of that, the process of that, and then just what do we think are the Bucks going to use it? Who do they use it on? What could this look like?
So the franchise tag window opened Tuesday, two days ago. It's a two week thing, so it'll stop on March fifth, eight days before the startup free agency, at four pm. So four well, I guess now about twelve more days teams run in the NFL can choose whether or not to put one franchise or a transition tag on a play. You can only do one and a year and really
usually about eight, seven or eight teams do it. So a lot of teams don't end up doing it because they just don't have a player who's in the right spot for it. What you need to have is a player that's going to be a free agent, a player obviously that you want to keep, and a player where the compensation from the trans franchise tag makes sense for what you would probably pay this guy. And so you know, the Bucks have some candidates. I'm not sure how you
know Baker Mayfield. You talk about that the quarterback tag is very, very very high. It'd probably be like thirty million dollars something like that. You've got Mike Evans. I don't know of this along your news career, if that's something they would want to do with him, because a lot of time players don't really like it in the franchise tag. You got Antoine Winfield. Have seen that name out there a lot. That could be a guy that fits because obviously he's a great player, first team All
Pro this season. And the best thing about the franchise tag when it works out great for everybody, is when it's used successfully to basically extend the exclusive negotiating period. So right now we're the only team that can negotiate with Antoine Winfield. But on March eleventh, which is the beginning of the legal tampering period, anybody can. And so if you put that franchise tag on him, at least
the exclusive one, they can't negotiate with other teams. And as you can see here, it's been done set with the Bucks of views of franchise tags seven times in their history, frequently recently three of the last four years, and Chris Gottin's listed there twice.
That's why there's only six names. So it's been done seven times.
And in this right hand column you see over here is what eventually happened after the franchise tag. Did the Bucks and that player come to a long term deal? You could see most of the times they have. I mean, there's been some different situations. In Paul Gruber, that was the very first year, and Paul Gruber is in the Ring of Honor, one of the most beloved Buccaneers ever. Awesome dude, So I'm not saying anything negative, but he
was very upset about it. It was a whole new thing and a lot of players didn't like it, and he held out. Yeah, and this is a guy who threw his first five seasons in the NFL, had never missed a single offensive snap. So he missed games for the first time. He held out for five games and they got a long term deal done. Some of them were easier, you know, Chris played on the tag his first year and the second year they got a deal done like a week after getting the tag. Another guy that could
be a candidate is a kicker, Chase McLaughlin. It seems weird to say franchise player for a kicker, but teams have done that a lot because yeah, Connor Barth's up there, and.
Then he got a long term deal after that too.
And the reason you see kickers get franchise tags is because compared to the other positions, that's a pretty low tag. I don't know what it is, maybe four million or something, whereas I think Antoine will probably around sixteen million.
It's going to be interesting to see ri. And then we know the combine is starting next week. So what are some of the big storylines you're watching or things that you feel like Bucks fans should be paying attention to at the combin.
Well, just to give you a little procedural bit, it'll start next Monday. That's when everybody arrives. The actual workouts don't start until the twenty ninth, but on Tuesday is a big day for fans of teams because both the head coach and the general manager of each team goes to the podium in the big interview room and spends about half hour there and then at least our guys Jason Light and Todd Bowles will also then go to a table in another spot and sit down with the
locals for another fifteen thirty forty five minutes something. So over the course of about an hour, they touch on a lot of topics, so you get a lot of nuggets, get allowed pieces of news, and they're going to be asked about all these free agents, so it'll be the first time they've talked about that in a while, So
stay tuned for that. Breed Dix our team writer reporter Brianna she will be there covering it live, but we'll also have the videos on the website so you can see what they say when they're at the podium.
But why are they there?
Why is Jason and all his people there and a lot of the coaches, because it's a chance to see all these players, and they will say every time a forty yard dash isn't what changes their mind. The film is what matters most. But I still think when a guy goes there and does something that makes a big.
O wow, yeah, you light it up.
That might cement your spot a little bit. And if you look back in recent years, the Bucks have had some pretty the Bucks have ended up drafting some guys that had some pretty amazing combine performances. I assume that's Callija there, and he ran a four to six seven. I believe it's ridiculous at that size. It was the fastest forty yard dash by a defensive lineman since two thousand and three. All right, so he's showing you there, Yeah,
I got speed. And look at Tristan Morris, I mean what we all remember that?
Yes, and that did translate to the field.
That four point eighty five forty yard dash was the fastest among the offensive linemen. And then he those vertical leap and broad up numbers are huge too, so he was just big. Zion McCollum ran a fourth through three forty and I don't remember how they put it all the game O, but ninety nine athletics SYSM.
Score is actually the maximum.
So he was incredible athletic as you can get.
Yeah, he's an athlete.
We know that Trey Palmer ran really really fast, and we know that's the main reason why the Bucks actually traded a pick to draft him, So it can make a difference.
So keep an eye on those workouts.
See the guys that maybe have you know, a four point three forty yard dash, or they do the bench press fifty times or something.
You know, just those guys help themselves.
Yep, that's going to be interesting. And you know, since we already talked about the wide receiver group a little bit earlier in the show, we figured this is a good time to use them as our position breakdown for the draft. That each week on Insider we have been talking about a different position group and saying how likely is it this is a high pick for the Bucks. So wide receiver do you see that being a round one maybe round two type of direction.
Yeah, we've already talked about safety, interior linement and defensive end or outside linebacker, but I do think wide receiver is a position the Bucks could target, and unfortunately, well we'll know by then. Unfortunately one of the reasons could be if they don't manage to resign Mike Evans. Again, as we already said, we really hope that happens, and we all want that to happen, But you have to acknowledge the fact that he could become a free agency
free agent and not be a Buccaneer. But even if Mike is back, it still wouldn't hurt to plan for the future there a little bit. I know Trey Palmer did a good job as a third receiver, but maybe you could get another guy to add to the mix. And the other half of that equation is because of all the prolific offenses on the college level now, there's almost never a bad receiver class anymore. Every receiver class it seems like there's good guys, and there's enough good
guys to go into the second and third round. So yeah, I could see no matter what happens with Mike, but especially if Mike departs, wide receiver being something they target early first roun definitely a possibility, but there will be some available in the second round.
All right, Well, we are going to talk a lot more about the draft in the coming weeks, including our show Rode to the Draft where we talk about some individual prospects. Are they guys we feel like we could see on the Bucks To make sure you stay tuned buccaneers dot com for that, and we'll see you next time.