The Conundrum Of Finding An Edge Rusher
January 13th, 2026
Downside of career?
Teams don’t let good edge rushers in there prime walk away — except the Bucs back about 13 years ago when they let Michael Bennett walk away for no good reason.
Joe was looking at the list of potential free agents at edge rush and for the Bucs to get one of these guys, Bucs AC/DC-loving general manager Jason Licht would have to go against every fiber of his body.
Licht is no big fan of getting edge rushers pushing or beyond 30, though he did just that 10 months ago. The data is strong that they’ve seen better days.
And no, drafting a guy is a waste for 2026. Bucs coach Todd Bowles’ next rookie edge rusher he develops into a double-digit sack guy will be his first. There’s no way the Bucs should light a valuable draft pick on fire.
Of the top edge rushers who may become free agents, many are either over 30, injury-prone or are on the downside of their careers.
Trey Hendrickson, 31, for example, had but four sacks last year because he was injured. Khalil Mack had but 5.5 sacks and is pushing 35. Joey Bosa is a walking injury report.
Malcolm Koonce had 4.5 sacks this season and he will be 28 in June. Joe is confident he might pull in good cash because he had eight sacks in 2023 and missed 2024 due to injury. Not exactly an inspiring option for the Bucs.
Aside from trading for an edge rusher, there just isn’t a potential savior out there.
Can there be some way Bucs AC/DC-loving general manager Jason Licht can recapture his magic from the spring of 2018 when he stole Jason Pierre-Paul for a measly third-round pick?
January 13th, 2026 at 4:12 am
Jason Licht is the GM.
That’s the problem.
January 13th, 2026 at 4:15 am
Odafe Oweh and Jaelen Phillips also FA options.
January 13th, 2026 at 4:26 am
While I agree completely that there’s little chance Todd develops one, there doesn’t seem to be much logic in kneecapping your GM by taking positional options away from him in the draft. Some of the draft ‘gurus’ if you believe in that sort of thing, say this draft is very deep with edge talent. If, as reports suggest, the glazers said no to Harbaugh because they believe in Jason, you can’t just take those players off the board because he hasn’t hit on one yet, as it stands to reason he’ll be back again in ‘27 even if/when bowles is let go.
If the next great prospect is staring us in the face at whatever portion, we can’t just say no because we haven’t been successful yet at it.
January 13th, 2026 at 4:40 am
Who signing FAs & pass rushers? The Bucs? Even if they did it probably won’t matter because they’re just gonna be dropping out a bunch because nothing’s gonna change with him. He’s gonna want to be involved in every single thing instead of just letting somebody else change it
January 13th, 2026 at 5:08 am
Good edges rarely fall in the draft. In the last 5 years, not ONE Edge rusher has been drafted outside the top 5 has produced either a pro bowl or an 8 sack season.
Meaning in order to pickup someone who really made a difference, we had to trade up multiple firsts and gamble.
The closest is Kwity Paye in 2020, who had 8 one year, but just 31 career sacks in 6 years. I’d rather we had Wirfs.
We did draft a guy with 7 (YaYa) in the 3rd round, so that’s pretty good value. Yes JTS didn’t pan out but without trading up and gambling away multiple first rounders, nobody has made a huge difference so far. Have been plenty of busts though.
Really not sure what you guys expect Jason Licht to do? Smooth talk the Lions into just letting us have Aiden Hutchinson because pretty please?
Also, isn’t this the same blog that was pounding the table for Hasaan Reddick 2 years ago? To trade away a 3rd and give him a big contract? How would we look now if we never drafted Tykee Smith AND gave Reddick a bunch of guaranteed cash the past 2 years?
For the first time in 5 years Licht has a pick inside the top 20. We’ve drafted 3 players (Spence, JTS, and Yaya) in the top 3 rounds, we’re 1-for-3 which is a small sample size. And we haven’t drafted an edge that high ever under Licht. So let’s see what happens before despairing over Licht drafting an edge.
January 13th, 2026 at 5:34 am
Gotta keeps swinging in the draft and you can’t look back or worry about the HC – the success of the team is Todd’s problem Jason has to focus on team building and have a gamblers mentality
They have to do what ATL did and trade up – Bailey would be my target I think he’s Von Miller – 15+2nd to get into top 10 or 15+3rd but u have to jump DAL who is absolutely seeking to redeem the Micah trade
Take the best ILB next (Hill/Rodriguez/CJ there’s a bunch -and flood the EDGE/front 7 position (Romelo height/masedoor/the MI edge etc) –
Also need one of Landman/Ellis/Lloyd/Quey Walker from FA
“Vos” needs to be relegated to ST & spot duty – Yaya should be edge 3, Walker should be 4 Nelson 5 Braswell ST or scratch
January 13th, 2026 at 6:10 am
Need a new defense more than an edge rusher. Both would be nice, but I saw a real defense last night in Pittsburg. The Bucs don’t have one. It was nice to see last night what a team’s defense should look like with a defensive head coach. Same can be said for the Seahawks. Kind of ironic we beat both those teams this year on the road. Seems like 10 years ago now. My guess those wins along with beating SF went a long way at retaining Bowles. I think the Glazers are chasing fools gold, but we’ll see. It’s going to take more than an edge rusher to right this ship.
January 13th, 2026 at 6:16 am
Bucs fans should be praying for a new owner, so a real coach could be hired.
January 13th, 2026 at 6:24 am
Not a conundrum. Jason Licht is way overrated by fans and local media who refuse to see that he sucks at evaluating talent. You can throw out the names of a few good players but the majority of players are just okay to straight busts. Lots of high draft capital busts.
Licht is the man in charge and he is not being held accountable.
January 13th, 2026 at 6:34 am
I don’t think we need elite edge rushers, nor do we need trade up to get one. We need at least 2 more Yaya Diaby types. 7 to 8 sacks, maybe 10 sacks per season and the ability to create pressure. Then we ensure we have elite playmaking ability at ILB. This combo, with depth will give us a chance to get off more on third downs.
@JBF. Dude you’ve been beating the Michael Bennett drum EVERY chance you get. We always let him walk for no reason, again context is important when we discuss who Bennett was, and/or the personality he was. Bennett was a guy of circumstance, he played up when he went to Seattle. He never had a 10-sack season in Tampa, in fact his numbers for the 4 years he was with us was 1-1-4-9. Pretty modest when it came to producing sacks. Not until his 7th season on an elite defense would he have his ONLY 10 sack season. And NO, he would not have stayed in Tampa for the $6M he signed to go to Seattle.
January 13th, 2026 at 6:34 am
“”Need a new defense more than an edge rusher. Both would be nice, but I saw a real defense last night in Pittsburg.””
That’s exactly right. Virtually every game since the bye it looked like our entire defense, and offense for that matter were all on Xanex. No fire. No enthusiasm.
Just missed tackles, opposing QB’s clean uniforms and horrendous pass coverage. With the bottom 5 worst defensive statistics in virtually every single category we have a HC/DC coming back who on any other team in the universe is fired the millisecond after the last game. Sickening. Just sickening.
January 13th, 2026 at 6:36 am
Finding edge rushers is beyond scientific. How do you measure intangibles. Jason Licht is right about aging edge rushers. They don’t age well like fine wine. They are just old and barely holding on at the cliffs edge.
Perier Paul was the exception. I can’t recall anyone like him.
You have to keep swinging for the fences.
January 13th, 2026 at 6:42 am
Spot on Joe.
Look back to 2019…..
Shaq had 5.5 sacks in Denver his rookie year.
He was not a regular starter and over the next 3 years he had 1.5, 4 and 3 sacks.
He was undrafted.
He was 26 yrs old when the Bucs signed him.
An incredible signing.
What did the front office see when they put that D line together (JPP was 29 and Suh was 30).
Whatever it was, we need that again.
I’ve soured a bit on the draft because our track record sucks and we don’t develop anyone. Now with the NIL money and the portal, most of today’s 1st rounders (all millionaires) come into the league with a warped sense of reality. Imho
January 13th, 2026 at 6:50 am
This year, the draft is the only real way to get anything that might be close to a viable edge rusher. That, or wait for a losing team trying to unload a final year contract midseason during the trade deadline. Sorry, Joe.
January 13th, 2026 at 6:52 am
I’d be in favor of drafting a beast at Right Tackle and at least making our front three formidable.
January 13th, 2026 at 6:57 am
Sounds like a coaching and GM problem. Still here?
January 13th, 2026 at 7:09 am
The BIGGEST conundrum is how to win with
The Glazers White Guilt
Jason and Bruce looking out for their jobs first and foremost
How Todd Bowels is someone going to become a 2026 NFL Head coach
Folks it the same old same old
The Beating Will Continue Until the Morale Improves
January 13th, 2026 at 7:18 am
Over the Bowles’ years I’ve loved analyzing his defenses (to the degree that I could based on limited data). His most fascinating year was actually his first … 2019. Oh ya we ended the season 7-9 and the defense was charged with surrendering 449 points (ranked #29); our Run Defense ranked #1 but our Pass Defense ranked #30. Sound familiar? If you look beneath all that though there were some fascinating things happening.
For starters, our defense had Jameis working against them. Jameis threw 30 INTs that year, and the team also fumbled 22 times & lost 11 of those. Those 41 giveaways resulted in 7 Pick-6 (for 48 points while our defense sat on the bench) plus numerous short fields that the defense had to contend with (and gave up FGs on some of those). That 2019 defense IOW was in its’ first year & had a LOT to deal with. But in the final analysis it was about as productive as this year’s defense (gave up around 400 points itself in 16 games).
One of the key reasons IMO is that they had a lot of new Bucs trying to learn a new defense (as well as contend with Jameis’ miscues). But many of those new guys were actually veterans; and very good veterans (Suh, Shaq, etc). But look at the construction of that defense plus the number of def snaps they played, then against their productivity, and something interesting pops up …
o Interior DLine: Suh (874), Vea (749), Gholston (493), RNR (293), Beau Allen (179), O’Connor (26), Daniels (3)
o OLBs: Shaq (889), Nassib (630), JPP (586), Nelson (153)
o ILBs: LVD (1124), Devin White (826), Minter (275), Acho (38), Bond (31), Bucannon (8), Dawkins (4), Cichy (1)
o CBs: Davis (934), SMB (686), Hargreaves (580), Dean (370), MJ Stewart (314), Ryan Smith (50), Wilkins (12)
o Safety: Whitehead (919), Adams (616), Edwards (614), Darian Stewart (170)
Now look at the sacks (47 total) & pressures (186 total), plus blitzes (613 total … most of any Bowles’ year), of each of those position groups:
o Interior DLine: Sacks – 6.5 … Pressures – 63 … Blitz – 9
o OLBs: Sacks – 34 … Pressures – 92 … Blitz – 292
o ILBs: Sacks – 4.5 … Pressures – 24 … Blitz – 194
o CBs: Sacks – 1 … Pressures – 2 … Blitz – 35
o Safety: Sacks – 1 … Pressures – 5 … Blitz – 83
What fascinates me is that our OLBs actually led the team in sacking the opposing QBs (OLBs got 72% of the sacks & 50% of the pressures, while doing about 48% of the blitzing). IOW, Todd used them a lot to actually rush the passer it looks like. And low & behold, they produced.
What helped tremendously though I’m sure is that the interior DLine was ‘beefy’ (Vea – 347; Suh – 313; RNR – 305; Allen – 327; O’Connor – 300; Gholston – 281). They didn’t get huge numbers of sacks (6.5), but they did get a LOT of pressures (63 representing one-third of the total team pressures).
Ironically though, if you evaluate the def snaps, most of the time it WASN’T a 3-4 defense. In roughly 75% of the def snaps we only had TWO NT/DTs on the field, plus 2 ILBs and 2 OLBs, plus 3 CBs & 2 Safeties. We played Nickel a BUNCH. Bucs DLine was still able to get good interior pressure with only 2 DLinemen because of the quality (and size) of our DLinemen. BTW, our defense was on the field for 1130 def plays that year. Our DLine, total, got 2,617 def snaps total … indicating that we averaged only 2 DLinemen out there in about 75% of the snaps.
The irony to me is that our Pass Defense was so bad playing with FIVE defensive backs, blitzing a LOT, and getting good sacks & pressures from the DLinemen & the OLBs. But that’s continued every year but one (2022) since Todd Bowles has been here. The ILBs, CB & Safeties had over 50% of the blitzes (312 blitzes), yet their ‘productivity’ (6.5 sacks & 31 pressures) was marginal.
January 13th, 2026 at 7:41 am
One thing I noticed is, all the top edge rushers the Bucs have had over the past 10 or so years were all brought in through free agency, from Rice to Barrett. My question, is this a development problem or just plain bad drafting. It’s a know fact that the last few edges rusher the Bucs have drafted, didn’t do well in Tampa and is not doing any better elsewhere. Is this a clue?