Welcome to Books Insider Live.
Casey Phillips here with senior writer and editor Scott Smith, and we have OTAs to talk about.
Feels a little bit more football.
Letantom, Yes, it's phase one, Phase two great, but finally now phase three and with you know the OTAs, the of the Vets, you have the rookies all out it's our first chance to kind of get a look at.
Looks like real pros.
Yeah, it looks more like real practice.
Your first time to see the Vets and the rookies all out there together after.
Rookie mini camp.
It's just to me it always feels like kind of the real start of the next season a little bit, and so I know that we have a lot to get to because of that. We also have a trivia question like we do every week now, so let's hear it.
Take it away.
I like to make the trivia question something relating to something we're going to talk about. So we're going to talk about kay Otten and Titans a little bit later. So the question is Kate Otten's forty two receptions in twenty twenty two were the second most in Buccaneer's history by a tight end. In his rookie season, who holds the team record for most receptions by a rookie tight end.
Rookie tight end most receptions?
All right, So if you know the answer to this, please leave it underneath the comments underneath our live video.
We will try to see.
If anyone gets it right later on give you a shout out on the show if we see it.
So again, that is your question.
Leave your answer in the comments underneath our live video on Facebook. So for now, let's talk a little bit about Chris Godwin, because, as we said, we've got the rookies out there, we've got the vets, and it is so funny now to think of Godwin as like such a vet and he's been here for so long that out there with everybody that this is the guy one
of the you know. Now with this new offense, new offensive coordinator, Godwin is the elder statesman out there, and so it'll be interesting to see not only him, of course he's great in a leadership role, but now with a new offensive coordinator, him coming off an injury, what are our expectations for him this year and what that could look like.
He was actually laughing about that too.
He said he came in one day and some of the other vets weren't there, and he's looking around. He's like, I'm like the old guy now, and I don't feel like an old guy. Don't feel like a young guy. But Chris Godwin, one of the things he said when he spoke to the media on Tuesday that I loved was he said he thinks he's very close to being back to the peak form he was at before his knee injury in December of twenty twenty one.
Now, remember we're.
Talking about a guy who had that injury in December December nineteenth, had surgery on January fifth or something like that, and was back on game on Week one of the twenty twenty two season, and then, despite missing a couple of games, had one hundred and four catches, which was just too short of the team record for a single superhuman.
It's absolutely yeah.
He was fantastic last year. He really was.
But the offense, as we know, was a lot of quick passes, which played into him playing out of the slot, and so as you see here, his yards per catch were by far his lowest of his career. And what we have here is sort of the evolution of how Chris Godwin's role in the offense has gone since his rookie season. If you look in the leftmost column there, you see the differences between the percentage of his plays
in the out wide and in the slot. And the reason those don't add up to one hundred is because there's other things like in the backfield or lined up tight. But for the most part, that's most of his snaps. And look at that from seventy sixty seven percent. Early in his career he was playing mostly outside and then twenty nineteen was the arrival of Bruce Arians and that staff, of course, and he started playing a lot more in
the slot. Now, if you look at his yards per catch and his route depth, you see those gradually go down. But we see from those first three seasons in particular, especially twenty nineteen, even though he's playing a lot more on of the slot, this is a guy that can get downfield.
Wow.
And that's what Dave Canals and Brad didzig No about Chris Godwin. Yes, he's fantastic in the slot. We're very lucky to have a big slot who can dominate in that. But he can also really help you on the outside. He can get deep if you think about the first touchdown in Chris Godwin's career, it was that in the last game of his rookie season that won the New
Orleans game. James Winston was probably supposed to throw a you know, Chris Gowin was probably running just a clear out round on a fly and Jamis was probably supposed to throw it underneath to get some yards for the game winning field goal. Instead, you threw it a top to Chris Godlin for the touchdown. And that's the kind of play that Chris Godwin is capable of making. And now they're going to use him more in that role. They'll still play in the slot, but he's going to
go back to playing more on the outside. And I think you'll probably see his route depth in his yards per kerry go out, I mean yards per catch go up.
That's going to be interesting.
And then another person that I know hopes to be a big part of the offense, Kate ot and you mentioned earlier.
We wanted to discuss him.
He spoke to the media and you know, now you have no Cambray, you have no Gronk. So the tight end group and leader is definitely going to look different than it has in a long time here at the Buccaneers. But Kate Aten had some really big moments in some big games last year and as a rookie, which is incredible. So what do we feel like expectations could be for him? Does he seem like the guy that is ready to be you know, the number one guy in that room.
Did you hear him talking about meeting Gronk? Did you hear what they said they did? No, you probably think, like, smash beer Ken's on their head.
Or well, if it was Gronk and Je it.
Was at Cam's house. They played board games. I love that board games with Gronk.
Board games with Gronk.
Kate said he didn't win, so Gronk might be pretty good.
I wouldn't be surprised. He seems like the guy that's just randomly good at everything.
In a way, kid wants to be like Gronk in that like him and a couple guys like George Kittle, he wants to be that true why two way every down tight end that you trust him in the running game to block to seel loft that defensive end on the strong side, and you trust him to beat the safety going down the seams and that's what he wants to be and honestly, we saw a lot of that
in his rookie season. Nobody's putting him in the group of George Kittle and Travis Kelcey and Gronk right now, But in terms of filling a role where you could be on the field for eighty percent of snaps like Gronk was, he's almost there already.
And the other thing about this is that.
He's probably going to get more opportunities in twelve personnel, which is two tight end sets, and they drafted Pain Durham probably in order to have more options for that, because if you look at this day, we have the Seahawks former Seahawks coach as our offensive coordinator now, Dave Canalis, and last year the Seahawks ran twelve personnel on twenty nine point five percent of their snaps, which is third
most in the league. And you see the difference between that and what the Buccaneers did and what the NFL average did is so I think you're going to see more of that, and that's just as Kate himself said, that's just more opportunities for.
Them, okay, and I love when this happens. We have breaking breaking news. But our one of our producers just handed this. It's I mean breaking news is you know, maybe a generous term. But in the off season we
can be generous is what we consider breaking news. We officially have the times for our preseason games and days, so if anybody was planning on making a trip to one of those booking tickets, we finally have because they always released the regular season schedule, and we know who we're playing in the preseason, but we don't ever really know when all of that stuff. So we now know that we were playing these Steelers August eleventh at seven pm at home.
That's a Friday.
Sure, I don't have a calendar in front of me. The next it doesn't say the day, just a good dated okay. So then we have the New York Jets on the road August nineteenth at seven thirty, So if you said the eleventh, you thought was a Friday, so that would make the nineteenth Saturday. And then at home again against the Baltimore Ravens for the third preseason game at seven o'clock August twenty sixth. So there are your
preseason times, dates, schedule, all of that. So hopefully we'll be able to see a lot of you out there at those games. I wanted to go ahead and give people another chance at the trivia question in case people tuned in a little late.
So hit us with that, all right, repeating the trivia question from earlier, because we're talking about Kate Atton a lot today. Caate Otten's forty two receptions in twenty twenty two were the second most in Buccaneer's history by a tight end in his rookie season. Who holds the team record for most receptions by a rookie tight end.
I like it, okay, So I know that we are Also we talked about we're in OTAs we're in was also called phase three of the off season programs. So take people through a little bit about what that means and where we're at in the off season schedule as they progress through to more real football.
Well you mentioned it earlier. It's more like a real practice. Now they're allowed to do offense versus defense. They weren't allowed to do that before. In the first phase is just basically working out and classroom stuff. And second phase who could do individual drills and things like that, But now they can have what looks like a recognizable football practice, there's no contact, no pads, so you don't get that
until training camp. But you do have receivers running against cornerbacks and so on quarterbacks trying to complete passes to guys that are actually being covered, and that's what you have in OTAs, and you get a total of ten OTAs. Here's the schedule, which we've already started, so we're at the end of that first line there, the first three OTAs, and then next week they'll be three more.
The week after that they'll be four more. All those are voluntary.
Now I counted, and I believe we had eighty of the ninety players on the right here. A couple of them are a little banged up and warn't playing, but they were here on Tuesday when we started, so we've had very good turnoff for that. But they are voluntary. Some guys choose to pursue their own regimens away from the team, and that's totally fine. And then on June thirteenth through fifteen is the three day mini camp, which actually is mandatory for all players, including veterans.
So that's what's left. And then after that it's the big break before training camp.
Okay, well, also we I know had some rule changes voted on this last week, So what if any of those are going to pertain to the average fan watching Again, Well, the.
Two big ones are they brought back the inactive third quarterback rule, which was it's not exactly the same as the previous rule, but it's very close, which was in effect from ninety one through twenty ten. So you know, you get it used to be forty six, so you get forty eight active players, and you have to name five to seven inactives depending on how many you have on your roster, you know, in game day elevations and
things like that. Now you can still do that, but one of your inactive players can be a quarterback that you designate as your third quarterback, and if your first two guys are out of the game due to injury or ejection, then that guy can come in and play.
And even though he was labeled inactive to start the.
Game under the old rule, once he came in, if it was in the first three quarters, the first two guys were then ineligible to come back into the game. But now if an injured quarterback goes out and that third quarterback is activated, if he is then ruled that he can come.
Back into the game. He can come back into the game. Okay, slight difference.
So, and then the other one is the new kickoff touchback rule, which if you've watched on college football you've
seen a lot of it. You can fair catch the ball anywhere on the field behind your own twenty five yard line, and if you do and you fair catch it, the ball's placed at the twenty five So it's just more of an effort really, Honestly, all of these changes to the kickoff rule in recent years have been to pretty much make fewer of them because it has been deemed the most dangerous playing the game, and it's about player safety.
Yeah, I'm slowly wish. We are always a big fans of all right, so we're closing out here.
Give us our answer to our trivia question.
Okay, are we gonna put it on the screen? I can do it for remember, Oh, there it is. The answer is Tim Wright, who had fifty four catches in twenty thirteen. And Tim Wright was a little bit of an interesting story in that, you know, Greg Shannon was the head coach then from Rutgers, and he was one of his.
Players of Rutgers.
He was actually a big wide receiver at Rutgers, but the Bucks brought him in and converted him to tight end and he had a big season catching passes in his rookie season. The other interesting thing about Tim Wright is he's a rare player that the Bucaneers have actually traded away twice.
It's incredible, such an interesting.
It's a little too much of a story to tell, but the Bucks actually traded him twice twice.
I love that.
All right.
Well, that's going to do it for us on this edition of Bucks Insider Live. Thanks for being with us. We'll see you next week.