Bucs OLB Haason Reddick.
Can one guy raise an entire position group on a team? Joe thinks so and the Bucs have proof. When Chris Godwin left last October with a season-ending dislocated ankle, Mike Evans demonstrated the Bucs were still dangerous in the passing game.
The Bucs’ inside linebackers but for one player were just not good. But Lavonte David is that good. His play covered up for a lot of bad play in the interior of the Bucs’ defense.
This is what stud players do. They raise the level of those around them, or at least cover up the warts with their play.
Joe thinks newly signed free agent edge rusher Haason Reddick is that guy, too.
Joe was reading a piece from Daniel Kelley of _FTN Fantasy_. No, Joe is not a fantasy guy. But Joe knows a couple of guys who work for _FTN_, including Aaron Schatz, the father of DVOA. Joe respects the hell out of Schatz so Joe will read his work, even if it’s fantasy-based because Joe is very likely to learn something from Schatz’s research.
(As always, Joe’s idea of fantasy has nothing to do with football but everything to do with a buxom brunette and an uninhabited Caribbean island.)
So Kelley’s line [that struck Joe](https://ftnfantasy.com/lost-at-sea-the-teams-with-fantasy-football-holes-over-time) was, “One player can make a team look good, but it takes a group failure to hit the bottom of the list.”
That’s so true which brings Joe to the Bucs’ edge rush. For a good chunk of the season, the Bucs’ best edge rusher in terms of putting quarterbacks on their arses was Anthony Nelson. And he’s a backup!
YaYa Diaby got hot late and it was reassuring to see him hit his stride in December. But yeah, 7.5 sacks is about the floor that the Bucs need from Diaby in the future.
Joe really believes adding Reddick to the mix not only will help Diaby’s game but also Calijah Kancey and Vita Vea, not that the Bucs’ stud tackles need help. But with fewer bodies to deal with now that teams have to atone for Reddick, that should spring Kancey and Vea even more.
And yes, as part of the chain reaction, YaYa should face a lot more single blockers each game.
So if Reddick is much like the guy from the Cardinals and Eagles who terrorized quarterbacks and much less like the virtual tackling dummy he was with the Jets, the signing of Reddick could absolutely be a home run move.