TAMPA, Fla \u2014 Each offseason, the Buccaneers make it clear about the players they draft and invite to rookie minicamp. They want additions who are good players and good people.<\/p>\n
WATCH: Bucs\u00a0rookie looks to make huge impact off the field<\/p>\n
Bucs rookie looks to make huge impact off the field<\/p>\n
“I think there\u2019s a lot of people out there that can evaluate talent, but it takes a little bit more to evaluate the person and the character,” Bucs VP of player personnel Mike Biehl said after the draft. “I think we\u2019ve gotten to a good point as a staff where we can kind of determine what kind of guys we want in this building.”<\/p>\n
Defensive lineman Elijah Roberts is one of those guys. Tampa Bay selected him with the 157th overall pick out of SMU. There’s no question about his talent or his potential. He led the FBS with 131 quarterback pressures over the past two seasons. There’s also no question about his off-the-field work with his mother, Shanda. <\/p>\n
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SMU Athletics\/@SMUFB<\/p>\n
Bucs rookie Elijah Roberts wants to make an even bigger impact off the field.<\/p>\n
“My mom, she has a non-profit for domestic violence victims. She\u2019s been doing that for over 10 years now,” the Miami-native said via video chat. “Ever since I can remember, me and my brothers and sisters [have been] packing up purses, writing nice notes to victims, sending it to the shelters where the women are and just handing them out.”<\/p>\n
The Bucs think Roberts has all the tools to succeed in the NFL. Now, Roberts wants to use his platform to provide daily support to survivors of domestic abuse.<\/p>\n
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SMU Athletics\/@SMUFB<\/p>\n
Roberts had the most QB pressures (131) in all of college football over the past two seasons (per TB Bucs).<\/p>\n
“There are women who are on the run from their abuser. They don\u2019t really have much,” he explained. “They\u2019re literally just on the run and they don\u2019t really have much with them besides the clothes on their back and the shoes on their feet.”<\/p>\n
Elijah views his Bucs opportunity as a chance to help his mother do even more good work.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m in a better position to help my mom grow that. Whether that\u2019s get her own shelter so she can help people out more or get people into housing and just giving that next step once you\u2019re in the shelter, and getting that next step into helping themselves.”<\/p>\n
The Bucs open rookie minicamp Friday morning at 11:40.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla \u2014 Each offseason, the Buccaneers make it clear about the players they draft and invite to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2077],"tags":[211,2956,7,3515,6,704,250,2597,2596,8896],"class_list":{"0":"post-32379","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa-bay-buccaneers","8":"tag-buccaneers","9":"tag-bucs","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-minicamp","12":"tag-nfl","13":"tag-tampa-bay","14":"tag-tampa-bay-buccaneers","15":"tag-tampabay","16":"tag-tampabaybuccaneers","17":"tag-training-camp"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114469428643865692","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}