Bucs GM Jason Licht just couldn’t stop himself. Three years after making the greatest mistake in his career as General Manager in Tampa Bay, Licht has fearlessly gone to the well again, selecting kicker Matt Gay from Utah, with the 145th selection of the NFL draft (5th Round).
Gay is the 2017 Lou Groza Award winner (Nation’s best kicker), is an 86% kicker with a huge leg (hitting 5-of-6 kicks beyond 50 in 2017), drilling kicks from as long as 56 yds out. He never missed an extra point in his career and has made 35 of 36 career field goal attempts under 40 yards.
The only negative mark on Gay is he has an odd three-step approach to kicking that led to three blocked kicks in 2018.
J.C. De La Torre
Want to give JC a piece of your mind? E-mail him at JC@whatthebuc.net JC De La Torre is formerly a columnist/blogger for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers blog site BucsNation.com where in 2016, he was nominated as best sportswriter in Tampa Bay by Creative Loafing. Previously, he served as a featured columnist for Bleacher Report on Tampa Bay sports, an editor and featured columnist for SB Nation Tampa Bay covering the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Gators, wrote for NFL.com’s Blog Blitz and contributed to Pewter Report, one of the top magazines on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. JC is also a filmmaker, comic writer and rabid Whovian.
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