Marcus Mariota had a private workout with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Tuesday. If you follow the Buccaneers' official Twitter feed, you know that.
Some teams are so paranoid about giving away their draft plans, they avoid private meetings with targets before the draft. The Buccaneers don't have that same issue with teams screwing up their plans because they have the first pick. It was still a bit odd to see a team so open and excited about a meeting with a prospect, as the Bucs were with the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback from Oregon.
The Buccaneers have put out many clues that they're set on Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston. So why the social media show for the meeting with Mariota? This is all from the Bucs' Twitter feed on Tuesday:
There were a few other Mariota-related retweets, and Buccaneers website writer Scott Smith gave a detailed account on his Twitter feed. The Buccaneers made sure everyone knew that they were talking to Mariota on Tuesday. But why?
I still believe the Buccaneers will take Winston. The Buccaneers are doing the smart thing by meeting with Mariota and working him out; there's no harm in doing all the preparation possible when you have a franchise-changing opportunity like taking a quarterback with the first pick. And if the Buccaneers are spending the time to meet with Mariota, there has to be a non-zero chance they could go against all the public hints about Winston and take Mariota instead. Otherwise, there's very little point in wasting their time. But still, I think Winston goes first.
Why the public show? Usually this type of thing is a smoke screen, but there's no point in that. The Buccaneers aren't gaining any leverage for trades by pumping up Mariota as a possible first pick. They wouldn't trade down past No. 2 anyway after cutting Josh McCown, their starting quarterback from last season, in preparation to draft one (though, with how bad the Buccaneers have been run recently, nothing can be totally ruled out I guess).
There's really no other obvious reason for pumping up the Mariota visit, except that it's a slow news day and the Buccaneers really don't mind making a public spectacle of it because it doesn't affect them either way. The Buccaneers have also shared on Twitter and written plenty on their site about Winston. Their site said they have a private meeting with Winston on Wednesday, which will likely get the same social media treatment. But, perhaps the Buccaneers are trying to tell us there shouldn't be assumptions about Winston being the slam dunk No. 1 pick. Either way, they seemed very excited to get to meet Mariota on Tuesday.
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdowncorner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab
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