The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have rounded out their 2014 NFL draft class focusing exclusively on offensive prospects. For the first time in their history, the Bucs drafted no defensive players, although in the 1978 draft they waited until the eighth round (they had those back then) to draft their first defender.
That offensive dominance wasn't by design, or so the Bucs claim, but simply how the board fell. Using a best-available-player approach, Jason Licht and Lovie Smith consistently found themselves in position to consistently draft quality offensive players, constructing the Tampa Bay Dunkaneers with their first five picks before finally adding someone with below-average size for his position. The Bucs drafted four players over 6'4", three of them having a significant basketball background.
The biggest surprise of the draft was the team re-committing to quarterback Mike Glennon, after talking about the need for athleticism at the quarterback position and several reports that the Bucs were willing to trade Glennon during the offseason. No such trade materialized, and instead Lovie Smith called the 6'7" signal caller their "quarterback of the future" and talked about continuing to develop him, behind Josh McCown.
Effectively, the Bucs used the draft to overhaul their offense, while adding a few key pieces on defense through free agency. Given the amount of talent the team has added this offseason and their own stated ambitions, anything less than a playoff berth will be disappointing at this point -- and that feels like a realistic goal.
