Offseason Stealing Signals, Buccaneers & Titans
Former Jeremiah Smith college teammates look like NFL No. 1s
I’m fascinated by the idea of teammate strength at the college level, and how to contextualize that. In writing about Carnell Tate before the draft this year, I labeled a section of a post, “You shouldn’t just assume things that aren’t there,” as a way to articulate what I think is a fascinating aspect of his evaluation that there are a lot of people saying he can do a lot more that he wasn’t able to do in college because Jeremiah Smith looks like the second coming of Julio Jones.
Since I wrote that, Tate landed at No. 4 overall in the draft into an offense where he’s very likely to run big routes from Day 1. I’ve certainly softened my stance on him a bit, and I’ll get into that today, but I do want to circle back on some of what I wrote about this theme.
When we look at truly great players who played together in college, typically both do very well. Justin Jefferson and Ja’Marr Chase both smashed with over 1,500 yards and 18 TDs each (teammate Terrace Marshall was overdrafted because he was overshadowed by such good players). BTJ smashed alongside Malik Nabers. Odell Beckham and Jarvis Landry both had 1,100 receiving yards in a passing offense where no other teammate had over 200, because they only totaled 3,263.
Most of the old Buckeyes like JSN and Garrett Wilson did way more with plenty of competition. You can kind of point to Chris Olave, who was bested by some younger teammates, and probably guys who are not even as good as Smith will be, but it’s worth noting Olave had two YPRR seasons over 3.3 and was over a 24% TPRR in each of his final three years, while Tate by comparison finished with a 3.02 YPRR in 2025 after two years below 2.0, and his final season 22.8% TPRR was his only one over 19%. That’s a big gulf in per-route production, despite Olave having a similar issue with raw receiving yardage where he never went over 1,000 yards (I’ll add that Olave did have two 12-TD seasons, while Tate had 14 total across all three collegiate seasons).
If you go look at Tate’s game log, it’s boom/bust, consistent with this idea that he didn’t elevate his situation, but was brought along by coverage leaning elsewhere via explosive plays (and likely specific matchups). He played in five CFP games over the past two years and had more than 40 yards once. He also missed games in his final year and ran just 290 routes, so this per-route breakout year in 2025 that’s mostly driven by a 13.3 YPT has a small-sample issue, as well. Could he have sustained that profile for 500 routes? We don’t know.
I do need to note that in the time since I’ve written this, I’ve come to understand that what Tate did was probably pretty similar to BTJ alongside Malik Nabers, which probably goes down as a pro argument, although BTJ had a lot more ball-in-hand upside and his rookie breakout featured a lot of quick-hitters that I’m skeptical Tate can leverage for production the same way.
Part of why I thought BTJ was quite a bit better was his routes sample was larger, but it’s one of those things where Tate was meaningfully better per-route, and then I was doing some math where if I bridged the route difference by giving Tate another 161 routes at pretty regressed efficiency, Tate would still come out around BTJ’s per-route production over the larger routes sample. In other words, what Tate did in his small sample was enough to overcome the routes gap. He was also meaningfully better in his first two years, despite neither being very productive over those early collegiate seasons.
But the bigger point there is probably best made about Terrace Marshall, and not as a Tate comp, but as an example of how we probably need to see it at the college level in a more meaningful way than we sometimes want to when we project through the uncertainty of great teammates with a lot of optimism. Marshall went in the second round after some solid ancillary production at LSU, playing alongside Chase and Jefferson, including two double-digit TD seasons. His final season was truncated, like Tate’s, but featured a similar YPRR on similar routes volume (Marshall was not quite as good as Tate, to be clear, and like BTJ he was meaningful worse in the two years preceding that, but the point is there was per-route optimism for Marshall).
Obviously at the NFL level, Marshall hasn’t materialized. Tate’s not going to be Marshall, but it’s interesting to me you never hear a guy like Marshall come up when we talk about teammate strength. As with anything, there are gradients, and we need to be open to a lot of different outcomes.
For me, the whole thing gets back to an idea that how good a guy will actually be is probably reflected in how good he actually was, even when sharing with a great teammate. For Tate, the production was solid, but he definitely took a back seat. That doesn’t mean he won’t be good at the next level, but it’s an important thing to understand when you consider his range of outcomes, which is wide — that’s the other whole point, is by guessing at whether a guy can be something he wasn’t necessarily in college, we’re definitely talking about wider error bars!
For Emeka Egbuka, who we’ll also talk more about today, the production was stronger through college, despite some great teammates. It wasn’t elite, which I still discussed as a bit of a knock last year, but Egbuka’s numbers were to a consistently higher level, including specifically his TPRRs looking strong over many more routes.
I’m not trying to make any clear declarations here, but again I think there are probably gradients here, and we should probably be more discerning about the uncertainty in this stuff than I think we are when we have a tendency to lump it all together, and usually err on the side of pretty optimistic assumptions.
Let’s get into today’s writeups. So far we’ve covered:
Cowboys and Saints, plus a longer intro into the series
Here are the Bucs and Titans.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Key Stat: Emeka Egbuka — 75 yards per game, 6 TDs in season’s first 9 games (33 yards per game, 0 TDs in final 8)
Relevant Signals Quote: “Emeka Egbuka’s 2025 is such a fascinating study, as we get a convergence of multiple cognitive biases (primacy effect and early confirmation bias for those who were big on him as a prospect come to mind) as well as discussion about situational production versus what is earned, and those related things. Egbuka got off to a ridiculous start, and was rightfully celebrated, but by the end of the season the Bucs were limiting his reps, as he went from a guy running routes on more than 85% of dropbacks most weeks to one who didn’t clear 70% in any of the team’s final four games. Early on, there was a thought this guy was a superstar, and I saw a lot on social where people victory-lapped stuff like Egbuka being the clear best WR in the class, as he scored 5 touchdowns in his first five career games, and was averaging 89 yards per game. From there, he went over 65 yards just once, averaging 41, and scored just 1 more TD. So what is he? I do think in the early going the Bucs were clearly scheming things for him, and it probably helped the production, and it’s a bit of a concern that despite all the optimism early they went in other directions as other guys got healthier. It calls to mind limited players who have been in great situations… only to see that fade quickly when the team was no longer interested in featuring that guy, because he wasn’t a difference-maker. That said, I’m not sure that’s actually what we have here. I do think you have to look at the full body of work, and not ignore the early stuff… his per-route profile shows a very strong 23.5% TPRR at a 13.2 aDOT with a 7.4 YPT that is a bit underwhelming when we depth-adjust but nothing horrible. It adds to a 1.75 YPRR, which again is good, not great, but definitely not bad for a rookie. That he ran 536 routes total in his rookie year is also a very positive sign. All of that adds to a promising rookie year. There’s just a part of this that feels disappointing, because for a stretch Egbuka looked like a guy who was on his way to that elite tier of WRs. With the full rookie season in the books, he no longer looks destined for that, but real upside here is also not something I’m ready to write off and start talking about a cap on his ceiling, just because his rookie year tailed off, when the full season was still very strong.” (Field Tippers)
Buccaneers Field Tippers pass-catcher analysis
Much was made last year about Baker Mayfield’s play regressing from a career year in 2024, but you can’t talk about the 2025 Bucs without talking about injuries. Let’s start on the offensive line, where superstar Tristan Wirfs missed early time, then fellow starting tackle Luke Goedeke was injured in Week 2, leading to rotational backup tackle Charlie Heck playing big snaps early. The Bucs also had a revolving door at guard, and would ultimately play 11 linemen on the year, with just two of those playing in more than 12 games, and Heck was one of those two (which wasn’t a good thing; he got into 14 games en route to a bad 45.2 PFF grade, and is no longer with the team heading into 2026). Their 2023 second-round pick, guard Cody Mauch, played just two games in 2025 after grading as the sixth-best guard in pass blocking in 2024, among 38 guards leaguewide who played 1,000 snaps. There are a lot of teams that deal with injuries up front, and a shift in personnel, but I remember in real time how ball-knowers were emphasizing that going from Wirfs and even Goedeke to Heck was a massive decline in tackle ability, and then the loss of Mauch further deteriorated things on the interior. Probably the Chargers are the only other team who can argue they had a similar dropoff after losing both Rashawn Slater and Joe Alt, and we also saw that really damage their offense (to be fair, Wirfs and Goedeke did both play more than half the season, whereas the Chargers lost both of their tackles for far longer). For 2026, the hope would be not just better health, but also better answers if disaster strikes again. To add tackle depth and replace Heck, the Bucs brought back veteran Justin Skule, who was with the team from 2022-2024 before spending a season in Minnesota. He’s looked far more serviceable in PFF grades than Heck. They also drafted a rookie guard in the fifth round to add depth there. Observers I’m looking at have this not just as an improved line, but one that should rank in the top 10.
There were similar issues with health at the skill positions, with Mike Evans playing eight games, Chris Godwin returning for parts of two games in Weeks 4 and 5 then needing to miss six more weeks, and Bucky Irving playing just 10 games. Jalen McMillan also played just four games, and so for a big chunk of the meat of the season you had Mayfield behind a patchwork offensive line playing with backups like Sterling Shepard and Tez Johnson in big roles. Not having Evans in 2026 changes the shape of the receiving room, and could have a negative effect on Mayfield’s pass TD rate as Evans has always been one of the very best red zone WRs in the NFL, but Mayfield still figures to be in a better situation than last year.
Zac Robinson will be the fifth different offensive coordinator in the past five years for Tampa, but the Bucs did work toward some continuity here, as Robinson worked closely with Liam Coen on the 2022 Rams, when Coen was the offensive coordinator and Robinson was the pass game coordinator and QB coach. Coen was the Bucs’ OC in that peak statistical 2024 season, and Robinson should presumably be working the offense back in that direction after the tough 2025. Over the past two seasons, Robinson has been in Atlanta, and in my last post I talked about the volume concentration for the Falcons last year, something I do probably expect to carry over to Tampa to some degree, health permitting.
A couple key things to add to the Emeka Egbuka notes above, which break down the data dropoff he saw in his rookie year, are that he had a bit of a hamstring issue and talked about tired legs late in the season, so it could have been influenced by health, and he also had a high rate of off-target throws, something that’s been hammered this offseason as people talk about his 48% catch percentage being unsustainably low. For what it’s worth, Robinson has been comparing Egbuka to Cooper Kupp this offseason, who he obviously worked with on the Rams, and everything about how Egbuka is wired from an off-field and work-ethic standpoint tends to be extremely positive and the kind of stuff you want to bet on. The elephant in the room is the shape of Egbuka’s rookie year was abnormal, as we just don’t see a lot of similar outcomes where rookies start as hot as him and then are losing not just production but also playing time late. It does call to mind guys who burned bright early but lost it (more like in ensuing seasons rather than immediately within the rookie year), like a JuJu Smith-Schuster or a Chase Claypool, although both of those guys were criticized for not being as committed to their own skill development (for different reasons). I talked about it above, but what was so shocking for Egbuka was the degree of the dropoff — he had some massive games early, with a huge TD rate, and then he didn’t score over his final eight games, and his high-water mark for yardage in that stretch was 64 yards, which was his only game over 45. That second half looks like the first half for a lot of rookies, as they find their footing, and if we flipped the two halves we’d all probably be going nuts for Egbuka, but obviously that’s not how it works. Although, maybe it should to a degree? The key for me is growth is not linear for everyone, and then every situation is unique. And going into Year 2 here, I do want to be optimistic in a bit of a rebound for this offense, and I also think things align very well for Egbuka to smash if he is personally ready. So the bet for me kind of has to be on Egbuka, and it’s a bet I want to make aggressively, even as someone who has been mildly skeptical of the ceiling on his actual talent based on the prospect stuff and then obviously some of what we saw in the rookie year.
One of the big things about Egbuka and then also the rest of the passing game is that without Evans’ really high receiving TD rate, I came out pretty light on Bucs’ TDs in my first pass through their team projection. Put differently, there are red zone and end zone targets to go around, and unless this team underperforms market expectations (as set by lookahead lines), there will be players who probably set career highs in receiving TDs. Mostly due to health, Evans only had 3 receiving TDs last year, but 12 different players caught a TD, including offensive lineman Wirfs, in a season where Mayfield’s 26 passing TDs were his fewest across his three years in Tampa (and well down from the 41 in 2024, a number we shouldn’t expect him to rebound to but also a number worth mentioning as an actual recent outcome). Prior to last year, Evans had 11 and 13 receiving TDs the prior two seasons, and to get Mayfield’s passing TD rate to a range that made sense for the Bucs’ overall touchdown production, I did have to move the receiving TD rate for multiple WRs up a bit.
Beyond Egbuka, the other key name here is Chris Godwin. Godwin was having a career year before a major injury in 2024, and obviously 2025 was a lost season as he returned too early and then missed more time (although the team suggested that was a new injury not related to his return timeline). Now 30, Godwin is coming off career-worst per-route numbers, though he was probably never healthy last year. Health seems key here, and the error bars wide for a player that has his quarterback’s trust and is the obvious answer if Egbuka is not up to the task. There are scenarios for this season where Godwin is the clear No. 1, and when he did finally get healthy that’s a big part of what happened down the stretch to Egbuka’s usage, is even a health-compromised Godwin seemed to have Mayfield’s trust and quickly became a focal point, and an established relationship with the QB like that is not something to just ignore. I’m probably not playing a ton of Godwin unless we start to get really positive camp reports, but I’m going to be open to news on him. I certainly understand the gamble here.