The Emeka Egbuka Catch
August 12th, 2026
Sweet one-hand grab.
Between all the fights and the Luke Goedeke helmet-toss, there was a play pretty much not noticed or was mostly ignored at the Bucs-Jets practice yesterday in New Jersey.
Emeka Egbuka had a sick catch in warmups. OK, Joe’s not getting ahead of his skis. It was warmups — in walk-throughs. For those unaware, walk-throughs are when players go slow motion to practice a play so they get it right. They’re maybe going 20 percent, if that.
(Joe will recount a great Antonio Brown story, and it came from Lavonte David: If Brown was upset or mad or pouting, he didn’t believe in going through walk-throughs. So while everyone else was going maybe 20 percent speed, Brown was going all out, full blast, 110 percent. LOL He could have hurt someoe, including himself.)
So Mayfield tossed a pass to Egbuka in warm-ups, in walk-throughs, against air, and rather than using both hands to catch it, Egbuka just reaches out with one hand and plucks the ball out of mid-air. Palms the ball like some do with a basketball.
Egbuka was so nonchalant about this it’s crazy. Yet that catch showed his serious ball-catching skills. Yet Egbuka almost looked bored. No big deal. Been there, done that. Routine day at the office.
The ball was clearly way over Egbuka’s head and it appeared when Egbuka grabbed it, the ball was past him.
Egbuka looked like he was picking an orange off a tree.
The Twitter video by FOX Sports NFL columnist Ralph Vacchiano got a lot of run. Vacchiano even said when he posted it he was out in the sun and never noticed what he had until later in the day indoors.
Joe sure would love to see Egbuka pull that off in a game.
Yeah, it is just walk-throughs. Yeah, air defense. Still, nifty one-handed grab by Emeka Egbuka. https://t.co/ztug4evTje
— JoeBucsFan (@JoeBucsFan) August 11, 2026
August 12th, 2026 at 12:43 am
Joe says:
Joe sure would love to see Egbuka pull that off in a game.
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He did. I forgot who we were playing against but he had a beautiful one hander on the sidelines.
August 12th, 2026 at 1:12 am
@ATLBuc…yeah that was the catch were Baker joked and told him not to disrespect his passes like that🤣
August 12th, 2026 at 1:32 am
Cam Coleman sure did have one for himself, the other day!!!!
August 12th, 2026 at 1:56 am
It’s weird how he can make tough/amazing catches once in awhile, but drop so many balls in the 2nd half of the season that Baker basically had to stop targeting him because his hands were so unreliable in the 2nd half of the season.
Hopefully he catches the ball more consistently. 💯
He’ll be a good WR3, WR4, or WR5 behind Godwin, Hurst, McMillan, & maybe even Tez.
August 12th, 2026 at 7:21 am
WR 4 or 5???
Erik, it’s only 2am and you’ve alresdy secured the dumbest comment of the day. Congrats
August 12th, 2026 at 7:30 am
Alot of the throws Emeka “dropped” last year were pretty bad throws from Mayfield. Tough to throw when your OLine is on the bench.
Egbuka is gonna be a stud in this league for a long time.
That being said, if I was the coach, Emeka would be running laps til he dropped every time he goes up for a ball with one hand. It’s alot easier to catch a football with 2 hands, and I ain’t whistling Dixie!
August 12th, 2026 at 7:44 am
No takes like hot takes.
August 12th, 2026 at 7:53 am
Erik = negativity
Glad he’s here to keep the positivity and fun level at respectively low levels. 🫤
August 12th, 2026 at 9:14 am
LOL that stuff always amazes me. I am a tall dude but I have terrible hands and small ones for my size. Lucky to catch the ball with both hands on a good throw.
Hoping he can get more catchable balls from Baker. If he drops one of those tough ones folks will start on his terrible drops. See Otton. LOL
Go Bucs!
August 12th, 2026 at 9:44 am
garro. Alot of fans see hand size measurements and don’t know how they measure the hands- open your hand up fully and measure from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger (can’t stand the word pinkie). For ball handlers, size does matter.
August 12th, 2026 at 10:59 am
Pretty sure the sick one-hander last year was also against the Jets; home opener in the ‘76 Whites. The Jets have a penchant for making people look amazing, but even they have to be impressed with it!
August 12th, 2026 at 11:24 am
Egbuka can be a good WR3 like he was at Ohio State, but (coming from a lifelong Buckeye fan) he was known for having seni-unreliable hands there too. Even though he had the most catches in Ohio State history, he still had a ton of drops.
He gets open well when a team’s CB2 or CB3 is covering him, so he had alot of targets at Ohio State and he also played 4 full sesaons which is alot of the train for the catch record. All of the historical best WR’s at Ohio State played less than 4 seasons.
I do like Egbuka, but I soured on him when he started dropping balls at like a 40% rate in the 2nd half of lost season.
I just think we have 3 or 4 WR’s who are overall better than him on our team, that’s not a knock on Egbuka. We just have really good WR’s.
August 12th, 2026 at 11:25 am
*reason not train
August 12th, 2026 at 12:36 pm
@Erik
That’s a knock. But hey, call it like you see it. History will prove it out one way or another. He’s popular and looked strong in the beginning But Then, he feel apart kinda in the second half of the season last year. That’s a fact.
He’s not a rookie anymore. I suppose we’ll see. I do not think it helped him or Anybody else when he and the others realized the players were at war with coaching and management! That tends to lead to serious focus finding issues! Especially when you’re a rookie…..