Carlton Davis Could Be That Guy

Let me just go ahead and get this out of the way: I am not a stat guy when it comes to cornerbacks.

Now, after analyzing film and just watching Bucs games, you saw some flaws, flashes, and overall raw talent from our 2018 2nd round pick out of Auburn University; Carlton Davis. I’ll be honest, although he looked at fault often, I can’t place a lot of blame on him. Now mind you, he was on a(for a lack of better words) confused defense and that, of course, can be attributed to Mike Smith’s scheme. You could blame the horrific play at the safety position, or just our guys in general, just not being vocal enough.

Despite those facts, Davis is a good open field tackler, he doesn’t shy away from the number one receiver, and he isn’t afraid to get physical with the more handsy receivers.

Whatever excuse you want to come up with I’m sure it will be based on the fact that our defense was just not good enough last year.

Going back to why I’m not a stat guy when it comes to cornerbacks.

Well, because this is a league fueled by the do not “touch a quarterback and/or receiver or you’re going to get flagged for it” rule. But if they push off? “We didn’t see it” and “they didn’t extend their arms”.

With that being said, I believe the ratio in the NFL is almost like, for every 1 defended passes, they have they give up 4 receptions, so it’s just a lose-lose situation when it comes to stats.

Carlton Davis will be able to play with swagger and show us whether he can be put on an island with Julio Jones and Michael Thomas. Looking at our schedule those are the best receivers we play. In a sense, he has one year under his belt against these dominant pass catchers and his familiarity with them and their skill sets have to have some advantages.

This also brings up a scenario: we have the draft coming which it has become quite clear that we will not use a top-five pick on anything other than a defensive player on the front seven. So this is just considering we don’t take a corner in the first round you got to think that Bowles and Arians are pretty comfortable with going into the season with Davis and Hargreaves being his 1-2 guys and pick a corner up in the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th rounds because there are some talented corners in this draft that will fall because of the depth across the board.

Only time will tell on how Davis performs in the new scheme because for a young guy learning two, maybe even three different playbooks in two seasons is a bit overwhelming to anyone. Let alone a rookie who has a ton of potential.