{"id":684642,"date":"2026-01-17T17:43:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T17:43:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/684642\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T17:43:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T17:43:17","slug":"the-rookie-class-joebucsfan-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/684642\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rookie Class – JoeBucsFan.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\tThe Rookie Class
\nJanuary 17th, 2026 <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Early star; late rumor.<\/p>\n

Man, the way Bucs rookie Emeka Egbuka jumped out to such a hot start, Joe thought he was going to carry the offense.<\/p>\n

But something happened along the way to San Jose\/San Francisco\/Santa Clara area of Silicon Valley where the Super Bowl will be held next month. What that something was, Joe has no idea but Egbuka vanished when the team needed him the most.<\/p>\n

Over at BSPN, the founder of Football Outsiders (RIP) and the inventor of DVOA, Aaron Schatz, typed up a ranking of each NFL team\u2019s rookie class.<\/p>\n

Schatz had the Bucs at No. 16, right in the middle of the pack. And Joe is convinced had Egbuka gotten better as the season grew old, not the other way around, Schatz\u2019s ranking for Tampa Bay would have been much better.<\/p>\n

But fear not, Bucs fans. Schatz seems to think Mayfield\u2019s struggles had a lot to do<\/a> with Egbuka\u2019s disappearance.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with first-round wide receiver\u00a0Emeka Egbuka. His production slowed down in the second half of the season, but that\u2019s in part because\u00a0Baker Mayfield was throwing him fewer catchable passes. For the entire season, Egbuka had 63 catches for 938 yards and six touchdowns.<\/p>\n

There is no doubt Mayfield\u2019s play slipped badly, too. Is that the real reason Egbuka vanished? Was Egbuka unable to adjust as defenses keyed on him more? Is one reason Josh Grizzard is gone because he couldn\u2019t scheme Egbuka open?<\/p>\n

Egbuka didn\u2019t help himself with a handful of bad drops, which early in the season seemed improbable.<\/p>\n

Here is why Joe is just a wee bit dubious of putting Egbuka\u2019s downfall on Mayfield. Late in the season, Egbuka was splitting snaps with No. 3\/4 receiver Jalen McMillan.<\/p>\n

If Egbuka was consistently getting open, he wouldn\u2019t have been splitting snaps with anyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rookie Class January 17th, 2026 Early star; late rumor. Man, the way Bucs rookie Emeka Egbuka jumped…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":684643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2077],"tags":[211,2599,2598,7,6,704,250,2597,2596],"class_list":{"0":"post-684642","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-message-boards","10":"tag-bucs-news","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-nfl","13":"tag-tampa-bay","14":"tag-tampa-bay-buccaneers","15":"tag-tampabay","16":"tag-tampabaybuccaneers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115911682622092955","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684642","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=684642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/684643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}