Now that Jameis Winston has finally, officially been drafted with the No. 1 overall pick, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers can stop worrying about potential distractions and start crushing them so that they are never seen again.
In a stark contrast to the days of endless rookie holdouts before the new Collective Bargaining Agreement of a few years ago, Winston signed his contract with Tampa Bay before the draft was even finished. MMQB’s Peter King reports that a clause in the new deal prohibits Jameis from playing professional baseball, something he’d said had “always been [his] dream.”
On one hand, the injury risk involved in playing a second professional sport is real, and it makes sense that the Buccaneers want to avoid being left hanging if something bad should happen. On the other hand, two-sport athletes are awesome, and Tampa Bay, for all of their bragging about their psychotic vetting process with Winston, seem determined to break Jameis down into the football-throwing robot they want him to be, not the self-assured, attention-seeking quarterback he clearly is.
Jameis Winston’s tenure as a Tampa Bay Buccaneer is not even a week old, and already we’ve seen multiple stories about the Bucs’ front office being paranoid over his off-field behavior. This does not bode well. Maybe they should just let Jameis live.
(Via MMQB)