This is a new segment I’m starting, to highlight certain players around the league on their performances, based on what I see, and I will try to get these up weekly, shining a spotlight for good, bad, or neutral reasons. We are fittingly going to start this segment with the first pick in this year’s NFL Draft: Jameis Winston, as I was at the Tampa Bay game this past weekend for their matchup against division rival Carolina.

How would Winston do against the fearsome Panthers defense? In short: not well. Winston appeared uncomfortable in the pocket for a majority of the game, throwing flat footed, or off balance to elude the pass rush, and he was picked off 4 times as a result, including a pick-six by Panther’s cornerback Josh Norman (1 of 2 interceptions he caught in the game. On the pick-six, Norman sat on the out route as Winston appeared to stare down the receiver, Brandon Meyers, on the play. Winston didn’t seem to be setting his feet on several occasions, and he also appeared to be staring down his receivers, this combination leads to a lot of interceptions. However, Winston also had some great throws on the day, and a couple of nice touchdown drives. The Bucs also had 2 drives that should have lead to field goals, but Kyle Brindza couldn’t connect on 2 of 3 field goals.

Despite the struggles with footwork and staring down his receivers, Winston does have a high ceiling as a quarterback in the NFL, as long as he can improve week to week, get more comfortable in Tampa Bays offense, he could be mentioned as one of the next generations great quarterbacks. Dirk Koetter is a good choice for an offensive coordinator for Winston’s development, as we saw in Atlanta with Matt Ryan, he can take a quarterback to the next level. There have been many players that have shown a ton of promise in their first four NFL games that turned out to be nothing more than a footnote in NFL history. Ryan Leaf won his first 2 starts, Cadillac Williams had 1100 yards in his rookie season, but never reached 850 yards again in his career. In short, there’s no way to know how great a player will be after 1 season, let alone 4 games, but there is a lot of potential in WInston, which should give Buccaneer fans hope going forward. The team needs to help him out though, he’s got a nice set of receivers in Vincent Jackson, Mike Evans, and Austin Sefarian-Jenkins, but Winston needs help on the offensive line so he has time to go through progressions. Doug Martin seems to be coming along as well and the oldest cliche in the book is “the quarterback’s best friend is the running game”, Winston could use a best friend like that. Based on what I’ve seen, Winston’s potential could carry him to become the next Ben Roethlisberger or the next Jay Cutler, but for now, he’s just Jameis.