Dirk Koetter wants Jameis Winston to work on his deep ball first

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers think they have their franchise quarterback in Jameis Winston, and he certainly had a good rookie year. But for him to turn a good rookie year into a good veteran year, he's going to have to work on some things -- as every young player does. When asked what Evans has to work on, Dirk Koetter singled out the deep ball when talking to the Tampa Bay Times.

"When we get him back in the building, we have a long list of things we want to work on, starting with the deep ball,'' Koetter said of Winston. "We need to be more consistent throwing and catching the deep ball.

"I don't think (Evans) and Jameis ever really had great chemistry that you see a lot of the top quarterbacks and receivers in the league have. How could they? They're both such young guys and they've been together just one year. I think as they grow older together, you'll see that chemistry improve.''

The lack of deep ball accuracy was apparent last year, and it was arguably the biggest issue stopping the Bucs offense from consistently scoring points. The Bucs consistently managed to get receivers open behind defenses in nearly every game, but connecting proved to be a lot harder. The numbers bear that out too, with Winston coming in 24th in Cian Fahey's tracking of deep ball accuracy.

We were talking about deep passers a lot last week so I isolated the 20+ yard throws from the QB Catalogue charting: pic.twitter.com/aj7I1yPrLP

— Cian Fahey (@Cianaf) March 23, 2016

Those are accuracy numbers, not completion percentage, so they're not affected by receivers dropping balls -- something that happened too frequently last year, though the frequency of that problem seemed to be overestimated in fans' minds.

The Bucs have a very aggressive quarterback in Jameis Winston, and someone who can consistently get behind defenses and contest for tough catches in Mike Evans. If both of them continue to work on their craft, the team should be able to build a highly explosive offense around their skill sets -- and they should be able to keep them together for a very long time indeed.