Bucs Are Still Third In Draft Order

December 22, 2009 at 12:32am by Scott   •  6 Comments »

Everyone stop getting your panties all in a bunch (except you chicks who read this, who shouldn’t be wearing panties) about the Buccaneer win against Seattle knocking them out of some draft sweepstakes. Like you, Gary Shelton.

At this point, what would you rather see? The Bucs with one more victory or the Bucs in position to draft Nebraska defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh?

How can Suh even walk around with so many people swinging from his hog? I said earlier you were going to get sick of the Suh talk, but it may come a lot sooner than I thought if professional sportswriters whose job descriptions do not include lusting over college boys take it upon themselves to anoint this guy a franchise savior before he has ever signed an NFL contract. Are there even other players declaring for the draft?

By now, you know all about Suh, the dominating Cornhusker. You know Mel Kiper has called him the finest prospect at the position in the past 30 years.

Yes, let’s all listen to Mel Kiper. How’s that Mike Williams Hall of Fame prediction working out for you?

You know he has been compared to Richard Seymour and Warren Sapp.

Have we not grown tired of looking for the next Warren Sapp? Gerard Warren, Glenn Dorsey, Amobi Akoye, Sedrick Ellis… I’m just pulling these names out of my ass here, but I’m pretty sure none of them have lived up to the “next Sapp” status. And I’ll leave it to you fine readers to see if you can find any defensive tackles that have been drafted since 1980 that are/were better than Suh will be. And I’m not even saying Suh will not be good. Maybe he’ll be great. But, fuck, you really want to sacrifice the improvement of 53 players for the possible acquisition of one?

You know his first name translates as “House of Spears” and that if you combine the first names of the Bucs’ front four, it translates to “Britney Spears.”

You suck.

On the other hand, if there gets to be a point today when Rudy Carpenter is handing off to Kareem Huggins, consider it a giant wink in your direction.

If that had happened, I would have called for Raheem Morris’s head from now until the decision was made. But it didn’t happen and the Bucs won, so go sit on your nuts, Shelton.

Back in 1992, a lousy Bucs team played an equally lousy Cardinals team. The two spent all afternoon sliding around in the sand, and the Bucs won 7-3. Just like that, their draft position fell from third to sixth (instead of potentially drafting Marvin Jones, they drafted Eric Curry. Well, oops.)

And Michael Strahan was selected in the second round that year.

Of course, if Wyche had come away with the higher draft pick, he might not have been fired three seasons later. Then again, maybe he would have been.

“Maybe a thing would have happened… or not.” Reporting, everyone!

“Tampa Bay has had a lot of high draft picks, right?” center Tony Mayberry said that day. “But it hasn’t had a lot of wins. I would think a true fan would rather have the win.”

Probably, that should be true. On the other hand, when is the last time you celebrated that 7-3 win over the Cardinals?

When is a regular season victory ever celebrated? Those kinds of games are pretty few and far between. On the other hand, maybe that Cardinals win gave Mayberry the momentum he needed to become a three-time Pro Bowler later in his career.

I really didn’t mean for this to turn into another diatribe about the Suh hype or another FJM treatment of a Shelton article. Sorry. But I just kept finding shit to write about.

Right now, the Bucs are picking #3 behind St. Louis and Detroit. The win against Seattle wasn’t so devastating — they’re been #3 before. I don’t see St. Louis winning again, so the Bucs aren’t getting the #1 pick. Chances are good they will pick a quarterback anyway. But if Detroit stays at #2 and Suh doesn’t hurt his position somehow, there’s no way Detroit passes on him. They have too big a need on the line and Jim Schwartz is a defensive guy who needs to inject some excitement into his franchise, and a college player with Suh’s popularity will be too sweet to pass up. Two more weeks, folks.