Greeting's Buccaneer fans. I'm Scott Smith, and I'm joined today by a guest that many of you are surely very familiar with. He came up through the Bucks speed. I mean, his Twitter handle is still Tampa Bay Tray. I think I think you still support the Bay Area teams. Of course. I'm talking about Trevor Sikima, who is now the lead draft analyst for Pro Football Focus, which is quite a gig. Also a co host with Connor Rodgers of NBC Sports of a very good and very popular draft related podcast
called The NFL Stock Exchange. Personally, it's a muscle listen for me. Check it out, Trevor, Thanks for your time.
Man, Scott is so good to be with you. Man. I'm excited to dig into the Bucks class a little bit here with you.
Yeah yeah, welcome back to your roots. Tell us a little bit before we get into the Bucks. What's next for the Stock Exchange and the stuff you're putting up on Pro Football Focus.
Yeah.
No, it's been a really exciting draft season and you know, to kind of your your your first point there.
It's always great. I always love.
Getting to come back and talk about Bucks football because you know, ever since the Pewter Report days and I was covering this team with Scott Reynolds and Mark Cook and everybody there.
You know, you cover the league.
Nationally, you go from that to kind of covering from a national perspective, and I just don't get to talk about the Bucks nearly as much. And I definitely but I get to go on shows like this. It's sort of therapeutic for me. I get to actually talk about the Bucks more. But no, this dock has change.
Has been great.
It has been an awesome year covering the NFL draft of Connor, who is one of my favorite just people in the industry and people in the world. So it's a lot of fun for me to be able to do that. You're a couple of weeks off after the draft.
Grades episode kind of came out last week, and we're going to dig into twenty twenty five prospects when we get into summer scouting in June and July, and then once training camp kind of gets closer, we'll kind of talk about some of the guys in twenty twenty for how they're doing in training camp, what we could see from this upcoming year.
So a lot of pack stuff this summer for sure.
All right, we'll just dive into the Bucks draft. First of all, can you believe Jason lt didn't make any trades the whole weekend? I mean, this first time he's ever done that.
It's the first time he's never made a trade, is that really?
The first time? In eleven dress all he had to do was call it the Eagles. They surely would have done something, but yeah, not one trade, just sat there at each pick.
It is funny because when I think about Jason, I know how much he loves the draft. So you know, some people will, you know, like the national people that I talked to, they'll be like, oh, maybe Tampa is going to be this team to get really aggressive and like jump all the way up from twenty six to I don't know, like seven or eight or something like that.
And I was like, probably not, because.
Jason loves the draft too much and I don't want to give up.
All those draft picks.
He's just his team building philosophy has always been through the draft. So I never really associate trades with what the Bucks do, But now that you say it, they do a lot of those little trades two day three, something like that, so that's funny that they didn't make a single trade this year. Yeah.
So well, Graham Barton the first round pick for the Buccaneers Duke center. Two questions there. Did you see that coming? And did you think it was the right pick?
Yeah.
I don't mean to kind of like too my own horn here and say that I called this year out, because I'm definitely not saying that that was the case.
But when I watched Graham Barton during summer scouting a year ago, I just looked at the type of player that he was, the positional flexibility that he had, that mentality had both for pass blocking and run blocking, just how he wanted to be a finisher, he played through the whistle, just his play style, his balance, all of that stuff, and I went, man, you know, people talk about him as the left tackle the Duke Blue Devils, but he'll probably be an interior offensive lineman at the
NFL level. That in and of itself is very much what Jason Light has gravitated towards you, Ali, Marpett, Cody mak Alex Kappa. Right, so many of these guys who played tackle in college, who kicked inside and had a lot of success at that level, and I looked at him last summer I was like, I have no idea if this is possible. I have no idea if the Bucks are even going to want an interior offensive lineman. But I bet he'd be a player that Jason light
would gravitate towards. So, you know, a week ago, or I should say a week prior to the draft, when Jason did his pre draft press conference and he said, hey, we got about five to seven players that we would be comfortable with at twenty six, I'd bet my bottom dollar that Graham Barton was going to be one of those players.
Now.
Didn't know if he was going to make it to twenty six. Obviously, they talked about them being shock that he did. But I think he's a perfect fit for what they want, right, I mean, like I think that they've obviously Tristan Wurf's is an All Pro offensive tackle and he's a mainstay there. It was great to see deck You get better last year. Cody Mack is obviously
coming along as well. But there are a couple of upgrades that they could have made it along the interior offensive line, maybe at Guarden, maybe at center, and Barton has the ability to play both. I know people kind of talked about, okay, his announce as a center, they'll probably start him at that center spot, But in reality, he's one of thost flexible interior offensive linemen who sure, in twenty twenty four he might be playing one spot for you, but in twenty twenty five it might be
a different one. And I still think that he's going to be able to maintain that high level of play.
So I did like Barton a good amount.
He's been a pretty much a top forty player for me since the moment that I watched him. He was somebody that I felt could be a late first early second round pick depending on where the overall hype from the league was going to place him. And so for him going to Tampa, I think it's a really great spot and he feels like a Buccaneers fit.
He really does.
I would imagine you could probably recite the Bucks entire draft for all the attention you paid too and for every team probably. So when you look at the draft as a whole, all seven players, is there one that sticks out as a particularly good value or a steal?
Yeah, I mean there's there's a couple that I like you know, and it's and it's more of you know, when I do this, I'll do a big board, and I'll have these players ranked in certain spots. But it's always kind of tricky, you know, when I do these
draft grades. You know, sometimes, for example, like a player might get drafted in the sixties and I might have him ranked in like eighties nineties on my board, but the fit might be fantastic, and so I'm not necessarily going to say, Okay, well I had him ranked twenty spots lower, and I'm going to like ding this team this team for it on their draft grade. If I like the fit, then I like the fit. Like I like that player going to that spot. I could actually
see them working out really well. When I look at a player like Jaylen McMillan, the wide receiver from Washington wide receiver was kind of a sneaky need for the Buccaneers's just long term, you know, I don't think it's you know, obviously with with Mike and Chris there, they're going to get the lion's share of the targets in the passing game, but long term, two three years down the road, you don't know where this team's exactly going to be So it's why you got guys like Trey
Palmer's why you draft the guy like Jalen McMillan to say, hey, you know, if we happen to move on from one of these guys sooner than maybe we thought we were going to, we're gonna be all right because we already got these guys in the farm system, if you will. McMillan to me is somebody who was really impressed with at the college level because Washington continued to emphasize him in the passing game. And we have a metric at PFF that we call threat and it's basically wide receiver usage.
How often are you getting targeted when you are running a route on the field in a passing concept That shows how much the offense emphasizes you when they are passing the football. Despite Washington having Romo Doonsay and Jalen Polk, Jalen McMillan still got a decent amount of the touches. They still wanted to get this guy the ball in
his hands. And I felt like, just because he was in a same class with those two other receivers, it was probably gonna push McMillan down just because he wasn't going to get that hype, but I really felt like where the Bucks drafted him, I thought that was a steal kind of at that back into the third round, I think that he could be really valuable for him And when I look at this class overall, that's the one that I think, Man, there is a path where he could really come in handy if the team's in
a financial pinch, or if one of those top two guys ends up going down or leaving a team in a couple of years, whatever it is, I think McMillan could fill in pretty nicely.
You know, our new wide receivers coach set on Monday that Chris Godwin is going to go back to playing primarily in the slot after his role kind of changed last year, and that he felt Jalen McMillan could play the ZX or the F And I know you certainly watched his tape and saw that they he almost played exclusively out of the slot at Washington. But given his skill set, you see him being able to thrive on the outside. Yeah.
I think so too, just because he's such a smart wide receiver.
Right. The thing that I like the most about McMillan and The reason why he had so much success from the slot is you give him that flexibility in that space and he knows what to do with it. Right.
It's not just the slot.
Isn't this thing where it's like a cure for all wide receivers where you just go, oh, okay, they're not great at the boundary, let's put him in the slot. They'll be great when you're in the slot. You have to, in fact, be able to manage space even better. You have to anticipate when space is going to open up. Those soft spots in the zone. They don't just exist for everybody, you know, unless you really do what you need to do to kind of manipulate the leverage of
where linebackers or corners or safeties are lined up. They're not just gonna give you the space just because you've still got to You gotta be a little savvy. You got to have a little nuanced to what you do. So McMillan, to me is a really smart football player in regards to how he finds that open space. I think that can exist as a spot and as a flanker,
as that Z player. You're not gonna want him on as an X because he's just not really that big, strong, on the line of scrimmage type of a wide receiver. But I like him anytime he gets to be off the line of scrimmage if you want him on the outside, because that also becomes a player that you can move around in pre snap motion sets, and I think he's got a lot of versatility and high football IQ to be able to utilize that too.
Speaking of the slot I've been stumping for, I believe the NFL needs changing the name of the position on defense from slot corner to something that doesn't have the word corner in it, because more and more you're seeing players that are nominally called safeties but did a lot of that slot work in college, and they they're brought in specifically to do that, even if they're called safety. Now.
I know the Bucks really really liked that Michigan corner Mikey Saint Bristol, and he went off the board before the Bucks in the second round. But I've heard Tykee Smith of Georgia described as a similar type of player, and I'm pretty sure he's going to get a slot in the a shot in the slot right away, and that is that? Was that a pick you liked and will he be able to handle that?
Yeah, this is definitely a pick that I liked. And when I watched Tyke Smith, wait, sorry, as my dog barking, can you hear that? Well? That's okay, okay, all right, all right, I'm I'm just making sure. So I really like Tyke Smith. And when you look at his background, he played more primarily safety when he was at West Virginia and then when he came over to Georgia, he
was that slot defender. And there's a couple of different names that you have for like in college football they call it a little bit of different things, Like sometimes see defenses call it a star position, which I think is aptly named because that player is sometimes integral to exactly everything else that you do in coverage. So you know, for this player that Tyke Smith was for Georgia, he was a more powerful, like bigger, stronger nickel defender where
sometimes it feels as though teams have to pick and choose. Right, Okay, do we want a true safety to try to play as our over hang in our nickel defender, because if so, then the quicker wide receivers might give him fits? All right, do we want a smaller corner to play that nickel defender role because if so, then if a team puts a tight end at that spot, man, then we're really getting a mismatch when it comes to size. Tyke Smith, to me, gives you a little bit.
Of that best of both worlds.
Now, I didn't have him ranked as high as I did Mike Sandristoll, but Smith really does kind of bring that to the table where he has the strength to match up against tight ends, and I think he's got the foot quickness against all different types of receivers as well. So that's why you gravitate towards a player like this because he can be, in theory, a one size fits all nickel defender. And as they say at this point
in the NFL, nickel is the new bass. You're playing nickel more than sixty percent of the time, So you've got to have a good player that you can rely on in that spot, and I think Tykee Smith can be that.
Okay, I'm not going to make it go down each pick one by one, but I do want to hear your thoughts on Bucky Irving, the fourth round running back out of Oregon, a guy that I think the butser hoping can really take a good chunk of the role right away, because they don't really necessarily want Rashaan White to lead all NFL running backs and snaps again this year. So what do you think of his fit in what the Buccaneers are trying to do and can he be a three down back?
I love Bucky Irving, I really do.
He was my RB five going into the draft, and I understand, Look, he's smaller.
He didn't really test very well.
Those are two things that normally go against you at a position that demands athleticism, like running back does. But there are two metrics that we we love to use when we are judging running backs going from college to the pros that sort of take away them from their offensive line, right because that's the ultimate question. When a running back is super productive, we go, yeah, it's just because he's.
Behind one of the best offensive lines. You know, like who knows.
These two metrics that we have can really take the running back away from that and we can see some more individual statistics from them. That is, misstackles, force per attempt. So how often you are making guys miss, whether that's in the backfield, whether it's at the line of scrimmage, whether it's when you get to the second level, how often are you making players miss? And then yards after contact, because no matter how your offensive line plays, you're probably
gonna get contact somewhere. Is it in the backfield, is it the line of scrimmage, is it at the second level, is it to the sideline?
Where is it? And how many yards do you get after that contact?
Bucky Irving was above the ninetieth percentile in both of those metrics, and when it came to force miss tackles per attempt, he was in the one hundredth percentile. There are I don't know if many running backs at all that we have seen over the last five, six, seven years that have had the average that he has had. And so what we do when we get those percentiles is we kind of divide that up into the last couple of years of guys who went into the NFL
draft and had successful seasons there. So when you look at Bucky Irving's numbers, he's fantastic outside of his offensive line. So that, to me is what the Bucks are probably looking for from him, is that one cut ability, the ability.
To bounce off tackles.
He has got a determined running style despite being a smaller player. Sure he's not going to hit the forty fifty sixty yard home run rushes for you, but you don't need that, and how often you really give the chance to.
Be able to do that.
You rather have a back that gets you a healthy four to five yards per carry every single time he touches the football, and that is the efficiency of the run game that I'm sure the Buccaneers were looking forward to increase, to always have out there where they believe or Shot White could be that guy. But again, like you said, you don't want to give this guy a million carries every single year. You want it to be a steady committee. You want to have somebody that you
can lean on. And Rashad White and Bucky Irving, I think are two really nice backs to pair here in this backfield to expect some good efficiency and some good production.
All right, Trevor, last question, I'm not coming into this one blind. I did listen to your podcast with the draft grades. I wasn't gonna risk having you on here and get slapping us with a D plus or something like that. So share with the Buccaneer fans the grade that you encounter gave the Buccaneers and why.
I gave this an A and I gave the Buccaneers draft class an A because there's not much else that you really could have wanted from this draft pass. Like, sure, you could say I would have rather had this player than this player, but often the situations aren't really plausible for that to be the case. You know, when you look at draft classes overall, I think of the context of where they were drafted and how they formulated this draft strategy specifically, and I thought the Buccaneers did a
really great job. Chris Braswell, to me, is kind of the ultimate wild card. If Braswell really breaks out and he really plays well, then this is just an absolute home.
Run of a draft.
If Braswell is more of just you know, kind of just a rotational edge rusher, that speed, explosive player who gives you a lot of power as a two point outside linebacker, even if that's just what he is as a rotational player, this class can still be very impactful because, like the players that we went over already, Barton I think can be a starter, Tyke Smith can be a starter, Jayalen McMillan could be a starter. And if Braswell is
another starter. I mean, for you to get four starters out of this class.
To me, that's just an absolute home run.
So I thought it was the exact type of draft that Tampa needed you could have. I mean I saw a lot of Bucks fans over the last month or so through out a lot of different mock drafts of you know, like, oh, what if they went edge rusher in the first round, or what if they went a different position in the first round, wide receiver, whatever it was.
But for how the draft fell well to them, I think they did a great job, as Jason light has done for a while now, of identifying the guys that they can get at every spot with a look ahead at like, Okay, if we take this guy here, these are the positions that we can get maybe around from now, and you have a really good draft strategy to it. I think that this draft was a representation of a really good draft strategy relative to the players and the
positions that they needed. And for that you got to give it an a.
Well thanks Trevor, and thanks for all your insight. Great stuff as I knew it would be. And hey, anytime you want to talk to the people that bought the Buccaneers. Just give me a call, man, I'll be your conduit.
I appreciate it, Scott.
You might regret that because I might request to get on a bunch of times during the season, but I appreciate it.
Man, anytime, all right,