Lovie Smith wants to keep all his option open in 2015 NFL draft

The consensus view is that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will take Jameis Winston with the first overall pick. That consensus is pretty strong, and the fact that the Bucs' official website published an interview with Winston only reinforced that -- though personally I expect them to do the same thing when Mariota comes to town, so I wouldn't read too much into it.

Still it's undeniable that the current, strong view is that the Bucs will walk away with Jameis Winston as their next quarterback. But in an interview with Jenna Laine of Sports Talk Florida, Lovie Smith says they're keeping all of their options open.

Yes, that's why for us, we feel like we want to keep all our options open. We haven't made any decisions or anything. The combine is just really the official kickoff to the draft, you can say. We have a lot of time in between, but it's good to be in charge, for us to set the tempo, to set the direction of the draft with the first-overall pick.

Of course, Lovie Smith would probably say that regardless of the real state of their decision-making process. There's no need to give away what they're going to do before they actually make it official. So read into that what you want -- if you think the Bucs are taking Winston, it's probably just coach-speak. If you think they're undecided, it's a telling moment of truth.

Other nuggets from the interview: the Bucs want to keep Lavonte David for a long time, Smith wouldn't rule out bringing back Mason Foster though he wasn't exactly excited about that prospect and Demar Dotson could stay at right tackle or move to the left. Please do read the entire interview, because there's a lot of interesting  stuff in there.