Welcome into Bucks Insider, presented by Verizon Casey Phillips. Here was senior writer and editor Scott Smith, and we actually were in Orlando this week already for the annual league meetings.
A couple of nice drives on night Ford.
Yes, who doesn't love doing that? Who doesn't love it? But you know, there's always a lot that comes out of it that's so interesting. You have owners voting, you have coaches and gms there for people to talk to. So we are going to get into that in a minute, but we cannot go without mentioning the Levante David press conference last week. Again on the show last week we mentioned he had re signed, but the press conference hadn't happened yet and there were just too many lovely things
that his daughter, for instance. I mean, who doesn't want I want to get into every press conference. I think it should be a requirement, but there's one at every press conference. But we wanted to give you a listen to Jason Light and Levonte David talking at the press conference last week.
For organization to you know, you know, draft me and I'll be able to you know, you know, have that faith in me, you know, give me a contract after three years, you know, just goes to show like how they feel about me. So it was only right that I, you know, rid it out to see you know how far it'stn't gonna go. And you know, you know, it's been a blessing and I'm thankful, you know, and we got a Super Bowl.
I love it. So I'm definitely grateful for that. I mean, he is the He's the poster child literally for us. We have a picture of a silhouette of a buck player in our draft room. Says, I am that man, and this is the person that we want in a player, the traits that you just or some of them that we just said, and it's doesn't show his face, but it is Levante. So he's the one that we that we look for every year. He's the standard.
I just love this idea of whatever it is that everybody watching does that your company, your friends, your family, that everyone would say things like you're the prototype for this thing would be nice, Like what a compliment of Like as we look for future players, we want them to be Levante David's. And I think that every single person that is interacted with Levante at this facility as a fan in any capacity would agree.
With that, and we were. That was no accident that they chose that. It wasn't just because it was a good picture or something like, we want Levonte David to be the guy we're staring at when we're deciding what's the next guy we want to bring to this team.
It's amazing.
And then Levonte himself, how much I know Buck fans already love him deservedly so, but how much more do you love him?
When you hear you know?
I could have left it any time no one was eight years, but that didn't feel right. I wanted to be there when we got I wanted to be part of turning it around rather than leaving, and he would have felt like a quitter. Yeah, so I'm so glad it worked out for him, right.
Of course.
Yeah, he absolutely has deserved the fact that now he does have the ring, he does have a little bit more national attention. We all know he deserves it and Hall of Fame resume. We are not biased, but let me tell you, I think that we all know and agree that he is a Hall of Famer through and through on and off the field, just a wonderful guy.
We're so glad he's still around.
We're so glad of all people to be able to sign four new deals with him, which how does that does not happen often? Someone else signed a deal with the Bucks. Again, we are continuing to dwindle down that free agency list a little bit. Zach Trinner, the long snapper re signed with the Bucks. Tell me a little bit about this and then what it means for how many guys we still have on that Penning free agency.
Yes, obviously, right before freegency and right in the first few hours of it, the Bucks had their top priority list and Mike Evans, Baker Mayfield all that, but you know there were some other guys there on that list. Originally twenty three players if you count the guys that could have been restricted and exclusive rights for agents, and then Russell Gage's last year option was declined, so it ended up being a total of twenty three guys.
And to this.
Point you could see the list here. Four of them have found spots on new teams and seven of them remain. But the Buccaneers have brought back twelve of them. And that's listed alphabetically. That's not in order of who I thought was most important. Antoina, of course, has a franchise tag, but they're working on a long term deal.
So a lot of the work has been done.
There's maybe a couple guys over here on the right hand column that still could come back. I wouldn't be surprised Will Golson, another lifelong buccaneer, Cam Gill, because you could always use more depth at that position. So, but a lot of work done and it's pretty impressive.
Yeah, is And that was something I know we got to hear a little bit of at the owner's meetings.
You know that Todd Bowles and.
Joel Glazer and a bunch of different people were talking about the fact of what Jason Lyden his staff have been able to do bringing all these people back and how amazing it has been. But also, of course one of the big takeaways of the annual meetings every year are the potentials for rule changes. This is where they get voted on. So what was discussed, what was past this week?
Yeah, there was a lot.
Actually I'm not going to go through all of them, but I think i'll hit the ones that probably got the most attention.
One of them was the ban of the.
Hip drop swivel tackle and got to get the word swivel in there, because that's one of there's like three parts of it that you have to do in order to draw the flag, and the most important one is they're calling a swivel, but it's the part where you've grabbed the guy from behind and then you take all your weight.
They say you unweight yourself.
Basically, you're taking your feet off the ground, swilving your hips and that causes all your body weight to bring down the ball carrier and you land on the back of his legs, which has a disproportionate number of injuries. So that's why they wanted to get that playout of the game. You know, it's going to be interesting to see how this is officiated early on. It's of course important, and Jason Light said this that player safety is what
that rules about, and that's of course very important. It's the same thing when they banned the horse callar tackle a few years back. To me, I can see this unfolding a little bit. You remember a couple of years ago when they decided to emphasize the part of the roughing the passer rule where you couldn't land on them with your full body weight, and for like the first five six seven weeks of the season, those flags were
everybody everywhere, and everybody was losing their minds. And then they kind of calmed it down, right, They kind of figured out how to call it right.
It wasn't happening three times a game.
There was an egregious calls that you thought were bad, and so I think you'll probably have an adjustment period here, but in the long run, it's gonna make the game safer, which is what everybody wants in the end, right.
Yeah, And this is where I'm sure teams are going to be talking to their players too, if you know, this will be a point of emphasis, especially in these early weeks, So don't do it.
Yeah, And Todd Bowles's reaction to it was, it's not really a big problem for us because we don't tackle that way. We don't teach it, we don't preach it, we don't practice. Of course, you really don't practice tackling at all, but you definitely wouldn't practice that technique. So he doesn't think it's going to be a big adjustment for the Buccaneers. I'd say one of the other really big rules was the new kickoff that they're going to try.
It's one of those rules.
They approve it for one year and see how it goes, and then they can make it permanent after that.
Because this is a massive change.
I explained most of it last week when we were talking about the stuff they were going to discuss. But the big thing is there's a landing zone from the goal line to the twenty where that's where you're trying to hit. They did change one little alteration this week.
If you get a touch back in the end zone, like flies all the way into the end zone, the ball comes out to the thirty They previously said thirty five, So it's a little less punitive if you want to just keep kicking touchbacks and not worry about returns.
This is going to be really interesting and I just I can't wait to see all the ways this will affect a team's strategy players they keep, because you know, even the idea of special teamers that they almost make the roster purely for their special team skills, is that more of a thing less of a thing? Does it change the body type the type of player that is your protote typical one? Is speed less important than just short field tackling ability. I just is your punter is
your kicker, the one kicking off. I just I think it's going to be fascinating.
We have a lot of answers ahead of us. But said you mentioned, like the how you put a roster together. One little thing that Todd Bowles pointed out when somebody asked, you know, do you want to find more options as a return man and he said, well yeah, because on kickoff now you have to have nine men from the return team at the thirty five. But you can have two return men and you don't want to let the
ball we talk about this last week. You don't want to let the kick hit in the landing zone then go into the end zone because then it's a touch back to the twenty. So I think it's likely that people will put two returnment back and have him split the field. And so you want two guys you're comfortable return like last year Devin Tompkins literally handled every single punt and kickoff return for the Bucks. You got to have another guy that you're confident in to put back there.
So that's interesting.
That will be interesting, all right.
And then you mentioned Todd holes speaking that that's part of these annual meetings as they have a coach's breakfast. They split it up AFC NFC into different rooms and every coach is given a table and then the media, whoever wants to listen to them, kind of goes and surrounds that table and gets to hear from that coach. So, I know you were there listening to Todd Bowles and his speech. What did you learn from that?
Sci You know, a thirty minute interviews is a really long interview. So by the end of it, someone who.
Coach, he used to be an hour, literally an hour, so many questions.
And well it gets to the point where people are cycling around and they come back and they ask a question that's already been asked before.
But whatever.
In thirty minutes you cover a lot and so we Todd hit on a lot of different parts of the team. A couple minus stood out for me. We've already talked about Jordan Whitehead and his return and how much how good that is for the Buccaneers. But another point he made was Jordan's a really good communicator and and you know, not that Antoine isn't back there, but when the two of them played together, Jordan was the more vocal the two in terms of getting people into place, and so now Todd feels like.
He's got a really good communicator at all three levels.
And Beata Bay up front, Levante David in the middle, and Jordan white Head back there at back.
So that's interesting.
Yeah, And then I know, you know, we always love talking about edge and corners.
Those are our little soap boxes of how you can never have too much depth. What did he mention about those two positions.
Well, the addresser position. Of course, you had the tough decision of letting Shack go and he's now with the Dolphins, and so clearly you know you need somebody at least for those snaps at the very least. I think the way Todd sort of thread the kneels like, yeah, of course that's something we could look to add at.
But we do like the depth that we have.
And he mentioned two guys that maybe don't immediately come to mind for Bucks fans when they're thinking about what that rotation is, and that's Marquise Watts and Jose Ramirez. Now, Marquis Watts made the team as an undrafted free agent, had a couple of nice moments during the season, but really didn't see a ton of playing time.
But I think they like his development.
And then Jose Ramirez was the six round draft pick who actually spent the season on the practice squad, but he's still around and he resigned, and so he said, they're really high on both of those guys. So we'll have to see how that impulse, but it's interesting. And then as far as the corners, he was talking about the two new ones that the Bucks signed, Bryce Hall and todby Thomas, and he just explained that both those guys,
like TAVIERI says, is a very tough guy. He can play in the nickel, he can be an option there, and he's also probably going to be a really core special teamer. And then Bryce Hall is a guy they've liked. Had some injuries early in his career, but they've liked his tape for a while.
Now.
He can play a little outside, he can play a little slot and maybe even a little safety. So these are a couple more guys that fit into that mold of the very versatile defensive back that the Bucks obviously like.
And then I know, of course Tod Goles is gonna ask answer a lot of things about the defense.
That's kind of his thing.
But I know He also talked about Rashad White and what we've seen from him leading up to this point and what they expect from him this year.
What did you learn?
Yeah, I think we all enjoyed the development of Rashad White last year in his first year as the full time starter and really one of the few bell kyw backs in the NFL who handled like eighty five percent of what you did in the backfield. And Todd said he really developed as a runner as the season went along because he did a better job of understanding where his cutback lanes.
Were going to be.
Instead of waiting to see them, he hit them quicker and before they could close. And that's why if you look at now his pass catching numbers throughout the season, we're very consistent. That was a good addition all along. But in the this is including the postseason. First ten games of the season, you see he was averaging forty five point nine yards per game and three point three per carre, which is not great. And we were talking about that at mid season, how the running game still
wasn't going great. And then as he started to see those lanes better, you see seventy three point one yards per game and four point two, which is totally acceptable, and if you could get that for a full season, you'd probably be pretty.
Happy with that.
Yeah, I think that's very accurate.
It always makes me think of the quote you always hear of a Peyton Manning talking about how he was taught like what open was in the NFL row and how it's like you have to predict it being open, and that the tenth of a second of a window is open. And it feels similarly with the running back and how you diagnose those lanes that if you already see it.
It's too late, it's going to be closed. Yeah, time ball gets there yet.
Yeah, that's interesting.
All right, Well, that's going to do it for us on this edition of Buccaneers in Cider. We'll see you next week.