Bucs waffle, but Jameis Winston will start week one

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers aren't willing to say that Jameis Winston will start on week one. I'm not sure why, because it's a foregone conclusion, but they're still being coy.

"We'll move on with that next week when they arrive here," general manager Jason Light told PFT Live on NBC Sports Radio after the Bucs drafted Winston. "I will say that it's pretty difficult to say with a straight face that we're not going to give Jameis that opportunity to win it right away. He's the first overall pick, he's very advanced in his ability to play and pick up schemes and concepts and learn the playbook relative to most rookies, or any rookie we've scouted in recent history. So he's gonna have every opportunity."

Winston is going to start week one. That's not a bold prediction, that's just a fact: you don't draft quarterbacks first overall to have them sit. You certainly don't draft one of the most pro-ready quarterbacks in recent memory to start Mike Glennon over him. That's just not going to happen.

The Bucs are probably going to be a little coy about this, because Lovie Smith likes to play the whole "everyone competes in training camp" game. That means that Winston may come in to OTAs as the number two quarterback, taking second-team snaps behind Mike Glennon. If that happens, it'll just be temporary.

Smith said the same thing about Gerald McCoy last year: someone comes in as the presumed starter, but everyone has to earn their spot by showing up. That's fine, but it's mostly rhetoric. We all know that Gerald McCoy's going to start, we all know that Vincent Jackson and Mike Evans don't have to earn their spots, and we all know that Jameis Winston will be under center come week one of the regular season.