Jason Licht's draft report card: ten years of picks, graded

On August 12, 2017, the Buccaneers released their kicker. It was not a journeyman clinging to a roster spot. It was Roberto Aguayo, a second-round pick from the year before, the highest a placekicker had been drafted in more than a decade. He had made 22 of 31 field goals as a rookie, the worst rate in the league among anyone who attempted more than two. His career Approximate Value on Pro Football Reference, the league's standard measure of a player's total contribution, reads exactly 0.

A year later, in the third round of the very next draft, the same front office found Chris Godwin, who has since caught 612 passes for 7,626 yards and 41 touchdowns in Tampa.

That gap between a second-round disaster and a third-round steal, one year apart, is the story of Jason Licht's decade in charge of the Buccaneers. He was named the franchise's fifth general manager on January 21, 2014, and enters 2026 in his 13th season, one of the longer active tenures at the position in the NFL. He has a Super Bowl ring, from the 2020 season. He also has Aguayo. Both are part of the record.

The first-round scorecard

A general manager is judged first on the first round, where the cost of a miss is highest. Licht's round-one picks since 2014, with career Approximate Value (AV) from Pro Football Reference:

Career AV through the 2025 season, Pro Football Reference. Egbuka's figure covers one rookie year.

Read that list honestly and the round-one record is good, not perfect. Evans, Vea, White, Wirfs and Egbuka are clear hits, and Winston was a genuinely productive number-one pick even though the Bucs let him leave in free agency after the 2019 season. Hargreaves is the one outright bust, and Howard and Tryon-Shoyinka are the kind of picks that never blow up a draft class but never elevate one either. Kancey and Barton are early in their careers and trending well. That is a hit rate most general managers would sign for.

The best pick nobody drafted

The 2022 draft is the strangest entry on Licht's resume, because he did not use a first-round pick at all. On draft night, with the Buccaneers on the clock at 27th overall, Licht traded that selection to the Jacksonville Jaguars for three picks: 33rd overall, 106th overall and 180th overall. It was the first time since 1998 that Tampa Bay had traded fully out of the first round after holding a pick in it.

The return was better than the pick would have been. With 33 they took defensive lineman Logan Hall (career AV 19 through 2025). With 106 they took tight end Cade Otton, now a full-time starter (AV 17). Their own second-rounder that year became guard Luke Goedeke (AV 22), a developing starter, and their third-rounder became running back Rachaad White (AV 26), who has carried the offense's ground game since 2022. Add fifth-round cornerback Zyon McCollum, a starter by 2025, and the 2022 class, built without a first-round pick, is one of the deepest hit rates of Licht's tenure.

Godwin, Winfield and the strength of the middle rounds

If round one shows Licht's judgment on the players everyone in the building agrees are talented, the middle rounds show his staff's actual evaluation work, and that is where the résumé gets stronger.

Godwin, taken 84th overall in 2017, is the headline: a six-time starter with 41 career touchdown catches who signed a three-year, $66 million contract to stay in Tampa in March 2025. Antoine Winfield Jr., a second-round safety in 2020 (pick 45, career AV 44), developed into a first-team All-Pro and, in May 2024, the highest-paid defensive back in NFL history at the time, on a four-year, $84.1 million extension. Sean Murphy-Bunting and Jamel Dean, both drafted in 2019, gave the secondary two multi-year starting corners from a single class. Bucky Irving, a fourth-round running back in 2024, ran for 1,710 yards and caught 77 passes across his first two pro seasons, a return on capital that a fourth-round pick almost never provides.

Not every mid-round swing has landed. Ke'Shawn Vaughn, a third-rounder in the excellent 2020 class, managed a career AV of 2 and was gone within four years. Kyle Trask, taken in the second round in 2021 to develop behind Tom Brady, never won the job and left as a free agent in 2024 having barely played.

The 2020 class, and what comes next

If one draft defines the Licht era, it is 2020. Wirfs at 13, Winfield at 45 and Vaughn's miss aside, that single class produced a top-five NFL tackle and a top safety who between them account for 108 points of career AV, plus depth pieces like wide receiver Tyler Johnson. It is the kind of draft that changes a roster's ceiling for half a decade, and it happened the same year the Buccaneers went out and signed Tom Brady in free agency, a reminder that the draft and the checkbook were never separate strategies under Licht.

The newer classes are too young to grade with confidence. Kancey and Barton both look like long-term answers on the interior of the roster. Egbuka's rookie season, 63 catches for 938 yards, arrived in the same year Evans left for San Francisco as a free agent, and it is not a coincidence that Licht used a first-round pick on a receiver the spring before his longest-tenured star departed. Succession planning, as much as talent evaluation, is part of a modern general manager's job, and on that measure alone, replacing an 11-year, 1,000-yard-per-season fixture with a rookie who produced immediately is as good a transition as a fan base can ask for.

The grade

Strip away the emotion of any single pick and the pattern is clear: Licht's Buccaneers hit more often than they miss in the first round, hit unusually often in rounds two and three, and have shown a willingness to trade draft position for value rather than clinging to a slot for its own sake. Aguayo remains the cautionary tale that will follow him, fairly, as one of the worst value-for-slot picks in recent NFL history. But a fan base grading Jason Licht purely on that pick, twelve drafts and one Lombardi Trophy later, is not grading the whole body of work.