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Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Breaking down George Johnson Trade

By Kevin Parvizi

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The Tampa Bay Buccaneers let Michael Johnson go after an incredibly disappointing first season with the team, but the move also left them laughably thin at the defensive end position with no proven starters. Jacquies Smith is an intriguing former UDFA, but if he, William Gholston, and Larry English are your three best DEs, then you have a massive hole at the position.

According to Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times, the Buccaneers have swapped late-round picks with the Detroit Lions in order to acquire George Johnson, who had something of a breakout year in 2014 with six sacks after never recording a career sack since coming into the league in 2011. It’s a risk to acquire someone as unproven as Johnson with the intention of starting him, but the sad thing is that he’s more proven than everyone except for Smith at DE on the Buccaneers roster.

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Johnson signed a three-year, $9 million offer sheet with the Bucs before the Lions complained, brought in an arbitrator, and settled things by accepting the offer sheet before snagging an upgraded late-round pick out of it. So the Lions came out pretty well, and the Bucs theoretically did too, although they now have another seventh-round pick this year instead of a fifth-rounder.

Per Greg Auman of the Tampa Bay Times, the fifth-round pick is the one they acquired from the New England Patriots, so it is the final pick in the fifth.

Last season, the Buccaneers had just one end with more sacks than George Johnson’s six, as Smith recorded 6.5 sacks in a breakout season of his own. In fact, he was the only end with five sacks, because Michael Johnson finished with just four in his lone season with the Bucs.

Acquiring this Johnson gives the Bucs pass rush some more credibility, but it doesn’t do enough to scratch defensive end off of their list of pressing needs in the draft. They desperately need to find a difference-maker at the position, because while Smith and Johnson did some nice things, they had just a combined 12.5 sacks in their respective “breakout” seasons. Even with Gerald McCoy, Henry Melton, and Clinton McDonald up the middle as easily the NFL’s best interior pass rushing trio, the Bucs still need more help up front.

The Lions deserve an awful lot of credit for leveraging the DE-desperate Bucs into moving two rounds down in order to acquire a player with just six career sacks and one season of positive tape, but that speaks volumes to how much the Buccaneers needed to add some sort of legitimacy to the position. There’s no doubt that they are taking a QB No. 1, so it will be just as interesting to see how they prioritize the offensive line vs. DE, especially since they might prefer to go OL with a rookie quarterback set to join the squad.

There is reason to believe that Johnson is a diamond-in-the-rough who can have his best days with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, because he is reasonably young at 27. And while he doesn’t have remarkable physical tools by any means, he was efficient last season for the Lions with Pro Football Focus’s ninth-best Pass Rushing Productivity among 36 qualifying 4-3 defensive ends.

That’s pretty caveat, and I’m not sure the Bucs are worried about the “he played around other elite players” caveat, because while Johnson undoubtedly benefited a great deal from playing with Ndamukong Suh up front, he’ll have McCoy and two other talented DTs next to him.

Although Johnson showed promise as a pass rusher in his first real season in the league, it’s unclear how much he can offer in run defense. That’s something the other Johnson was a star at, but the Buccaneers aren’t moving down in the draft for run defense; they made this trade in order to upgrade an anemic pass rush that clearly hasn’t taken enough pressure off of a struggling secondary.

Oct 19, 2014; Detroit, MI, USA; Detroit Lions defensive end George Johnson (93) during the game against the New Orleans Saints at Ford Field. Mandatory Credit: Tim Fuller-USA TODAY Sports

The Buccaneers have axed three major free agent failures in Johnson, Dashon Goldson, and Anthony Collins, with two of those additions being Cincinnati Bengals veterans who are cut after just one year on the job.

Jason Licht has been swift when it comes to parting ways with his mistakes, so that puts some pressure on George Johnson to prove that his 2014 season wasn’t a fluke induced by an elite Lions defense that was much more well-rounded in talent than the Buccaneers D will be next season.

But just as Licht has been quick to cut ties with mistakes, he’s also been aggressive with going after players he seems to like, so maybe there’s something to Johnson, based on how hard Licht went after him this offseason.

Next: Buccaneers: Making the case for Mariota

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