Bucs UDFA QB Jalon Daniels.
For quite a few of the players who were on the Bucs practice fields behind One Buc Palace today, it will be their final time wearing shoulder pads and a football helmet for a purpose.
Day 2 of Bucs minicamp came to an end today and so too did the football-playing days of several guys with the Bucs.
Bucs coach Todd Bowles said he wanted to see improvement in players on the second day. Learn from mistakes and not repeat them. Joe saw that with at least two players.
And remember boys and girls, this is underwear football. No pads. Hitting is strictly forbidden.
* Bowles noted yesterday several players (including third-round pick receiver Ted Hurst) struggled with the Florida weather. That should not have been a problem today. At times, it was pleasant. There was a constant strong breeze and for roughly the second half of practice, the skies were overcast. Then again, Joe is a beer-drinking Floridian who craves warm if not hot weather, so what Joe considers comfortable, others from north of the Mason-Dixon Line may think is sweltering.
* When the Bucs hired veteran special teams coach Danny Smith, 72, to fix the horrific Bucs special teams, many in the NFL, including the Bucs, were quick to point out how intense Smith is. This was not false advertising. Both yesterday and today, during special teams periods to begin practice, Smith was non-stop chirping. Non-stop. Periodically, he’d drop an f-bomb for effect, but man, the passion this guy has is both impressive to Joe and envious. If any of us make it to 72 and have the passion that Smith has for his job, we will all have had a good life.
* Joe noticed something in Smith’s special teams drills Joe has never noticed before. It was scoop-and-score drills. For place-kicking defense. A Bucs staffer would hold a ball out maybe three feet above the ground and each player had to race in from either the left or right side, swat the ball away, and scoop and score. That was a first for Joe, but Joe loved the attention to detail by the high-energy Smith.
* Once again, UDFA quarterback Jalon Daniels (Kansas) got by far most of the snaps today. In fact, during 7-on-7 and 11-on-11 drills, Joe did not notice another quarterback throwing a pass outside of maybe one (for most of the offense vs. defense passing drills, Joe’s line of view was heavily screened).
* Caution: Since Daniels threw every pass in Joe’s notes, there is no need for Joe to repetitively type his name. So when Joe references a pass in the following notes, just know Daniels threw the ball.
11-on-11
* Tight ends got a lot of targets today, which is interesting to Joe. That means either new Bucs offensive coordinator Zac Robinson is going to throw to Cade Otton a bunch this year, or the Bucs saw something in the tight ends yesterday that they wanted to see what the tight ends can do with more targets.
* Offense vs. defense drills began with 11-on-11s. On the first play, Ted Hurst caught a pass on the left sideline for minimal gain.
* Bauer Sharp (LSU) and Daniels cannot quite connect on a pass to the left sideline.
* The one play Joe noticed (again, Joe was heavily screened) when Daniels was not on the field, Chandler Morris (Virginia) botched the snap. It appeared the defense recovered (at least Joe saw defensive linemen pointing the opposite way).
* Rashad Amos (Georgia State) runs to the left for a nice gain.
* Hurst catches a pretty pass that hits him in the hands to the right sideline.
* Daniels is significantly more accurate than the guy who threw most of the passes in last year’s rookie minicamp. And yes, Joe knows exactly who that was and what he’s doing (for the time being) now.
* Daniels throws a deep pass to the left that fell incomplete. Joe couldn’t tell who the target was.
* Kadarius Calloway (New Mexico State) had a big run to the left.
7-on-7
* Sharp catches a pass over the middle. Sharp seems to be much more agile than any of the Bucs tight ends on the 53-man roster other than Devin Culp.
* Hurst catches a pass along the left sideline.
* Sharp ran a crossing pattern from his left and when he got to about the right hashmarks, he caught in stride a sweet pass from Daniels with his outstretched hands. Very smooth pitch and catch.
* Noah Short (Army) catches a pass over the middle in a crowd. Joe won’t use a foxhole reference here.
* Tight end Finn Hogan (Bowling Green) catches a short pass just off the grass to the right.
* Sharp catches a pass along the left sideline.
* Tight end Ademola Faleye (Washington State) catches a pass down the left seam for about 15 yards.
* Garrett Greene (West Virginia) — remember him? — couldn’t haul in a deep pass in the end zone. Ball was out of reach.
* Keontez Lewis (Oklahoma) goes high to catch a pass along the left sideline.
* Daniels targets Junior Vandeross (Toledo) near the left sideline and the pass was broken up by Jackson Zimmerman (Colorado School of Mines).
* Anthony Frias (UCLA) runs up the middle.
* Calloway runs to the right.
* Frias runs to the right.
* Vandeross hauls in a pass over the middle.
* Tight end Kenny Fletcher (Rutgers) catches a pass to the right.
* Daniels tries for Dean Patterson (Georgia Tech) down the left sideline at the goal line. But Patterson was double-teamed and he couldn’t hang onto the ball.
* Patterson was targeted again and this time he caught the ball on the left side.
* Daniels is flushed out of the pocket to the right, looks downfield, but takes the checkdown and rifles the ball to the right sideline for Hogan for maybe a three-yard gain. Good awareness. Good discipline looking downfield. Good decision to live for another down. And when Daniels made the decision to use the checkdown, he wasted no time breaking out his fastball to get rid of the ball and potentially avoid getting hit or sacked (if this were a live game)
* Joe isn’t saying Daniels is going to make the Bucs. That’s insanely premature. Hell, he wasn’t even drafted. But Daniels is such a better quarterback, both running and throwing, than what the Bucs had last year at rookie minicamp that it would not be a full-blown disaster if Daniels, as a No. 3 quarterback, was pressed into duty. Let’s just say Daniels looks every bit as good as Teddy Bridgewater did in practice last summer (or Kyle Trask for that matter).
* Daniels scrambles and runs for a huge gain up the middle and then heads left.
* On a crossing pattern with Hurst moving left to right, Daniels overthrows Hurst.
* You could just see that Hurst was running smoother routes than Friday.
* Daniels tries for Lewis down the left sideline and the pass is broken up by Caden Fordham (North Carolina State).
Bucs special teams coach Danny Smith was billed as a high-energy guy. Not sure this video is picking up his audio, but during special teams drills he is non-stop chirping. I mean non-stop. And this guy is 72! pic.twitter.com/f1x17ymrnv
— JoeBucsFan (@JoeBucsFan) May 9, 2026
