Will Jameis Winston be a top ten quarterback in 2017?

Jameis Winston is a pretty good quarterback. We don’t quite know how good the Tampa Bay Buccaneers signal caller is right now. He improved from a promising rookie season into a solid sophomore performance, and we can probably expect some added gradual improvement this year.

Cameron DaSilva of Fox Sports thinks the Bucs already have a top ten quarterback, though. To be precise: he ranks Jameis Winston as the ninth best quarterback in the NFL.

Winston made great progress in his second season, developing into a much better passer than he was as a rookie. His ceiling is remarkably high, and if he can cut down on turnovers in Year 3, he’ll rise further on this list.

I am slightly confused which games he was watching to see the “great progress” and “much better passer”. Winston was certainly better last season than he was as a rookie, but that seemed to be a case of incremental progress not instant improvement.

That incremental progress led to a pretty solid performance, though. Not quite top ten, but Football Outsiders ranked him 15th overall, while the graders over at Pro Football Focus thought he was the 16th quarterback in the league. Those rankings seem about right to me, which is pretty impressive given the fact that neither Austin Seferian-Jenkins nor Vincent Jackson were relevant contributors this past year and the Bucs had no running game to speak of.

This season, I’d expect Winston to turn into that top ten quarterback we hoped to see last season. Steady improvement, DeSean Jackson and a draft pick or two should take care of that.