If you ask Buccaneers Ring of Honor general manager Jason Licht about his front office and its accomplishments, there’s a good chance you won’t get an answer for five minutes while Licht rattles off seemingly endless names of his subordinates and how they are all rock stars that run the show and make him look great.
Licht seems to try and up his gratitude level every year.
He’s even escalated since calling Mike Greenberg, the Bucs assistant GM, “the real GM,” That was four years ago when Greenberg was the Bucs director of football operations.
It’s all very sweet, but Joe doesn’t want to hear it. Licht is the big cheese and deserves the accolades that come his way, and the criticism.
And the love has been flowing.
Former Eagles scout and popular podcaster John Middlekauf, Colin Cowherd’s go-to sidekick on NFL matters, was gushing about Licht this week on The Colin Cowherd Podcast. Middlekauf even suggested Todd Bowles would have failed without Licht’s operation backing him up.
“He got Jason Licht, who anyone in the league will tell you is easily one of the best GMs,” Middlekauf said. “Just a high-level humble guy who’s seen it all, worked for everyone that mattered in the league over the last 20 years. And their team, like they have had so many injuries. And you watch them play, I mean offensively they’re missing their starting running back and their Hall of Fame wide receiver and they scored 38 points on the road against Seattle? Wow.”
The New York Times polled 29 general managers head coaches and team executives across the NFL recently and asked them identify the best five front offices in the NFL. The Bucs got 2 first-place votes, 0 second-place votes, 2 third-place votes, 3 fourth-place votes and 4 fifth-place votes.
That translated to Licht’s crew ranking tied for sixth-best in the NFL with the Packers, slightly better than the Lions and Seahawks.
Yeah, Licht’s been that good in recent years.
“I think he’s one of the best GMs in the business,” a second exec said. “He’s an excellent evaluator. He empowers his guys to run a really good department. He lets the scouts do their job and values their input. They’ve done a really good job for several years of knowing the type of guy they want in their building and sticking to that, just being very disciplined about who is in the locker room, who is in the building, the type of person they are, on top of the quality of player.”
Joe is obviously a Licht fan. He’s gone from bad to tolerable to great — and he seems to keep improving. If Licht, a renowned offensive line whisperer, can add edge rusher guru to his résumé, he could find himself in Canton one day.
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