In the four seasons since they beat the living daylights out of Patrick Mahomes and won Super Bowl LV in a 31-9 thrasher, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have been a successful team by most conventional measures. They’ve won the NFC South in each of those four seasons, and their regular-season mark of 40-28 in that time is right up there with the NFL’s best.
Both general manager Jason Licht and head coach Todd Bowles received contract extensions in late June, and this is the only NFC South team to make the playoffs in each of the last five years.
The problem has been, of course, the limited postseason success since that Super Bowl win. A 2-4 playoff record, and never advancing past the Divisional Round, are not points of great pride for any franchise. It’s a sting for one of the most stable teams in the league, but there’s something preventing these Bucs from taking it over the top.
The overall roster is not a serious issue. The 2024 Bucs ranked seventh in Offensive DVOA and 16th in Defensive DVOA, and this was with a fairly large number of injuries. Licht and Bowles have done a great job of keeping the band together and adding to the team in smart ways, but when your seasons end quickly when it counts the most, what once looked like stability starts to be more about bumping your head on your own ceiling.
Following the 23-20 Wild Card loss to the Washington Commanders on Jan. 12 that ended with Washington kicker Zane Gonzales’ 37-yard field goal as time expired (and quite a bit of general frustration that his own team didn’t match the Commanders’ fourth-down aggressiveness), Bowles seemed especially resolute that the mistakes of the past would not be made again.
“We’re not going to overachieve and disappoint. We underachieved as far as [we] are concerned. We don’t worry about external expectations. Our internal expectations were for us to go to the Super Bowl. Injury or regardless, our internal expectations are to go to the Super Bowl. We did not get that accomplished. We did some good things throughout the year, yes. We had guys injured, yes. We got to the playoffs, yes but our expectations are to win the Super Bowl.”
If these Bucs are to buck their recent trends, it’ll be up to everyone on the roster to figure it out. In the continuation of our “Hidden Gems” series, let’s look at three Secret Superstars on the 2025 team — one underrated veteran, free-agent signing, and draft pick.
Underrated Veteran: CB Zyon McCollum
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Given Bowles’ experience as a defensive back and a defensive backs coach, one expects a lot out of the secondary prospects the coach really likes. This was the case for Sam Houston State’s Zyon McCollum in the 2022 draft. Smaller-school guys aren’t generally going to see their talents match their draft positions in the eyes of NFL shot-callers, but Bowles and Licht traded for a fifth-round pick they didn’t have that year (they’d traded it to the New England Patriots for guard Shaq Mason) to call McCollum’s number with the 157th overall pick. It cost the Buccaneers a fourth-round pick to the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2023, so everyone was on board with McCollum’s addition.
Perhaps it was the performance McCollum put up in his final season with the Bearkats, in which he allowed 31 catches on 56 targets for 371 yards, 219 yards after the catch, two touchdowns, three interceptions, three pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 65.4. Perhaps it was the raw athleticism that exploded off the tape, which Bowles saw as raw clay he and his staff could mold into something special.
It took a second for McCollum to get the hang of the NFL, and he had time to figure it out. Jamel Dean and Carlton Davis III were the established outside cornerbacks in his rookie year, McCollum had just 147 coverage snaps, and it was all about development.
Then in 2023, McCollum got nine starts as others were injured, and you saw that potential start to blossom. In 2024, it really blew up. Once Davis was traded to the Detroit Lions, McCollum was the man opposite Dean, and he made the most of it. He shut down all of Detroit’s high-flying receivers in Week 2, and parlayed that into a third NFL season in which he allowed 56 catches on 91 targets for 793 yards, 292 yards after the catch, four touchdowns, two interceptions, 14 pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 91.3
“I think just mentally the approach I’ve taken to the game, and understanding my athleticism and how it matches up with the rest of the league,” McCollum said last October of his overall approach. “The more I understand that, and what I can get away with, the things I can do to take advantage of some of the athleticism I have, is making me turn into the type of player that I envision myself as.”
Only Denzel Ward and Darius Slay had more pass breakups last season than Zyon McCollum’s 14. The Sam Houston State alum (go Bearkats) looks ready to become a true No. 1 cornerback in his fourth NFL season. @Buccaneers pic.twitter.com/zgGjYzZuYE
— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) June 25, 2025
At 6’2 and 199 pounds, McCollum has an expert’s flair when it comes to matching receivers through their routes, and clamping down on them as the ball comes in. That’s where all the deflections come from. If he can turn some of those breakups into interceptions, and correct the occasional “Lost in Space” moments in coverage, McCollum could look back at 2025 as the season in which he became one of the NFL’s best at his position.
Underrated Free-Agent Signing: EDGE Haason Reddick
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The 2024 Bucs ranked third in the NFL in blitz rate at 34.2%, fifth in sacks with 49, and ninth in pressure rate at 24.3%. Pass rush wasn’t a problem per se when you look at the numbers, but at the 2025 scouting combine, Bowles made it clear that this wasn’t good enough.
At all.
“It doesn’t reaffirm it,” Bowles said, when asked whether the Philadelphia Eagles’ ability to demolish enemy quarterbacks without blitzing reaffirmed the importance of pressure without sending extra defenders. “We’ve been talking about it all year. We can cover guys, but when we don’t get there, sometimes it’s a problem and sometimes the quarterback got out of the pocket, and we did get there and the ball was out. I’m not saying it was all the time, but we just want to be able to do both.”
Then, when asked about the season Joe Tryon-Shoyinka had, Bowles doubled down on the needs he sees as most pressing.
“I think Joe did everything right for us except get to the quarterback on a consistent basis. I thought from a run standpoint he was fine, from a drop standpoint he was fine, from a toughness standpoint, he was fine. He did everything [we asked of him]. Obviously, when you think edge-rushers, you want to think get to the quarterback first. And that didn’t show up from a double-digit standpoint. Some of it — we drop differently than normal teams, and some of it is you have to turn the corner at some point. Just rushing the passer a little bit more will be the only thing. Everything else, he did okay.”
So, the impetus is clear. And the actions taken have been similarly definitive. The Bucs didn’t do much in free agency because they were focused on keeping their own guys in-house, but the one big move they made was the one-year, $14 million contract given to veteran edge-rusher Haason Reddick with $12 million guaranteed.
It’s an interesting time in Reddick’s career, and it’s been an interesting career overall. The Arizona Cardinals selected him with the 13th overall pick in the 2017 draft out of Temple, screwed up his obvious EDGE potential for three years by miscasting him as an off-ball linebacker, and finally reaped the benefits in 2020. Reddick then went to Carolina for a year, and then signed a three-year, $45 million contract with the Philadelphia Eagles in 2022 just in time for a monstrous season in which he totaled 21 sacks and 87 total pressures. The Eagles traded Reddick to the Jets on April 1, 2024, Reddick held out for a new contract, the Jets didn’t budge, Reddick wasn’t available until Week 8, and his production was subsequently limited to three sacks and 26 total pressures on 241 pass-rushing reps.
Reddick was in the wind after that, and the Bucs were more than happy to take advantage.
“Well, first of all, [we’re] really excited to have him,” Licht said of Reddick on March 31. “He’s a really unique player. He’s got a lot to prove; he’s very hungry. I really enjoyed the conversations we’ve had since we signed him. He’s going to play to try to get another bite at the apple, which I like. He’s really excited to help the young guys. He’s talked about that – being a leader and all those things. So that’s always going to help. I’m just excited what he can do for all the young guys – for Yaya [Diaby], for Calijah [Kancey], for Vita [Vea], [Chris] Braswell [Jr.]. All those guys will benefit from him.”
Licht has no worries about any issues surrounding the prior holdout.
“Every situation is different; there’s a story behind everything,” he said. “I think it’s behind him, and in some ways, I was kind of excited. It gave us an opportunity to potentially get great value. I’m rooting for him to have a great year.”
As Bowles pointed out during minicamps in mid-June, that mentorship the Bucs had been hoping for from Reddick is already happening.
“He’s been great the last two days, talking to guys on the sideline about hand placement, length, what foot to use, when to go under, when not to go under,” Bowles said. “He has a lot of leadership qualities, as well. He’s been outstanding the last two days, helping the younger guys. It can only help Yaya [Diaby], as far as his hand placement.”
That’s nice and all, but Reddick can still bring it from the edge. He’ll turn 31 on Sept. 22, but in his last game for the Jets against the Miami Dolphins in Week 18, his one sack, six total pressures, and forced fumble proved the theory. Maybe Reddick isn’t the every-down force he used to be, or perhaps his “well-rested” 2024 season brings a return of the force he once was.
Underrated Draft Pick: EDGE Elijah Roberts
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The Bucs also went heavy on pressure providers in the draft. There was the selection of Central Arkansas’ David Walker with the 121st pick in the fourth round, which added one of my favorite smaller-school edge guys…
Central Arkansas EDGE David Walker (No. 8). Not a lot of big-school tape in 2024, but go back to Week 1 of the 2023 season vs. Oklahoma State, where he pretty much lived in the backfield in three- and four-man fronts. Third-day prospect who could outperform his slot over time. pic.twitter.com/VMFHlAm4h7
— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) April 6, 2025
…and there was also SMU’s Elijah Roberts with the 157th pick in the fifth round. In 2024, Roberts had eight sacks, 60 total pressures, 22 solo tackles, 25 stops, five tackles for loss, and two forced fumbles. That Roberts did all of that at 6’4 and 285 pounds, and that two of his sacks and 12 of his pressures came on snaps in which he was aligned as a defensive tackle… well, this is the kind of multi-gap guy the Buccaneers tend to love. And if you go back to the 2023 season, when Roberts had 13 sacks and 71 total pressures after transferring from Miami because he wasn’t getting enough reps, you’ll know that this is no one-year wonder.
“I think he’s got the ability to do a lot of things,” assistant general manager Rob McCartney said of Roberts. “He’s a pressure player that can get to the quarterback. I think you start there and you see he’s 285 [pounds], he runs in the 4.8’s and he’s got long arms and a lot of production – both TFLs and sacks. I think his role is on third downs and sub packages. He’s going to be a guy that we can move around – we can stand him up or play him off the edge. I think he’s going to be really good rushing inside over guards, too. In the base stuff, I think there’s a chance we get creative with him, too. I think he can play end, I think he can be the 4i [inside] [or] five-[technique], too. I think there’s going to be a lot of versatility that he’s going to be able to offer us.”
SMU’s Elijah Roberts is a fascinating fifth-round pick for the @Buccaneers. Todd Bowles is an evil genius with his fronts, so imagine what he’ll do with a 6’4″, 285-pound dude who can demolish from the edge like No. 5 can. pic.twitter.com/RyfDNGHKha
— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) June 25, 2025
Versatility and production? Those are the names of the game for modern NFL pass-rushers, They’re what Bowles wants more than anything right now, and there are a few new guys who are ready and willing to provide them.
(All advanced metrics courtesy of Pro Football Focus and Sports Info Solutions).